HRRecruitingAlert.com » competitor

Court: Noncompete covenant was too vague

Sam Narisi — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:00:41 +0000

Many of your competitors may require employees to sign noncompete agreements. How can you hire the best workers out there without interfering with one of those contracts?

In one recent case. a software development firm offered a job to a man currently employed by another software company.

However, the employee had signed a noncompete agreement in which he agreed not to work for a “conflicting organization” or any company engaged in a “substantially similar” business within a year after the end of his employment.

Therefore, the competitor filed an injunction to keep the company from hiring him.

But a court threw the case out. The judge ruled the noncompete was too broad to enforce. Phrases like “any conflicting organization” and “substantially similar business” were too vague to identify which companies the employee was prohibited from working for.

Cite: Technology Partner, Inc. v. Hart

Recruiters sued for ‘poaching’

Sam Narisi — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:00:29 +0000

A recent lawsuit shows the dangers HR can face when hiring another company’s workers.

JP Morgan Chase has sued recruiting firm The IDW Group, alleging the firm broke a contract by enticing several JP Morgan employees to accept jobs with the company’s competitors.

JP Morgan alleges that IDW was under a contract to provide search services for the company — and then used proprietary information to poach employees for other companies.

It’s not just recruiting firms that can be accused of “poaching” — companies can sometimes face similar challenges when they do their own recruiting of workers at other companies.

In one recent case, an employer knowingly hired two employees who were still under a contract with a competing company.

The employer was held liable in court for helping the employees break the contract.

Cite: CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. Werner Enterprises, Inc.

My best recruiting idea: We found something applicants wanted

Sam Narisi — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:00:55 +0000

Periodically, we’ll share a real-life recruiting problem and tell you how one HR practitioner solved it. Today’s issue: competing with the big buys for talent:

We’re not a big company, but we still targeted top-notch talent. Getting them to join us was tough. So we asked ourselves: What are the everyday issues employees at other companies gripe about that we’ve already handled?

To help, we asked our employees to list things that bothered them about their previous jobs. The consensus: Top management at their previous companies didn’t value them and didn’t keep them in the loop on company news that affected them.

That’s something we definitely did. So we began stressing to job applicants that we:

had a town meeting program that everyone — including the CEO — attended, and
had an open-door policy — in fact, our CEO didn’t have a door at all.

Result: We’re getting top hires and our retention rate is up.

(Lisa Velte, HR manager, Analytical Graphics, Inc., Exton, PA)