Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

T Raja — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:26:57 GMT

Corporate and ethical values especially in Asia is needed to ensure a free and fair trade level playing field.

The US certification programs addresses a much needed requirement for the coporate community in Asia. Due to the spread and the coverage your blogs and its links will provide a useful vehicle and hence the request to post.

In more ways than one we will co-operate as after the training the search services will be next - for some executives who are certified to be placed in more meaningful positions.

I look forward to all your help.

Thank you.

T Rajagopal

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

HeatherLeigh — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 04:05:03 GMT

Thanks Tod...that's nice of you to say. I told my manager he needs to start referring to me as a "beacon of goodness" and he wasn't buying it. I told him "your beaconness" would suffice..still no-go. Dang!

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

tod — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 23:56:54 GMT

Heather - That was an interesting read, even for those of us outside the recruiting world. You did a fine job in articulating your thoughts and position. Thanks for sharing.

Oh, and as Paul put it, you definitely are a "beacon of goodness." I constantly refer people to your blog not only for HR/recruiting stuff, but just for plain good reading about Microsoft and our culture.

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

Jeremy Langhans — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 17:36:07 GMT

Heather, Hope you are doing well! :-) I miss my recruiting friends in the NorthWest. Will i see you next week in Boston? Thanks for bringing up (& covering well) ETHICS ... it's VERY important that we (as an industry) address & fix this virus. People who Ruse are liars & shouldn't get paid for "research". Period.

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

HeatherLeigh — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:35:01 GMT

Eric-I really don't want to go into my take on legal issues, for obvious reasons. Let's just say that I'm very "in synch". I wouldn't work here if I wasn't.

Paul-I agree that personal ethics and honesty at work go hand-in-hand. But if someone chooses to be dishonest in their personal lives but follows the rules/codes at work, there's not mucn a company can say about it. I was limiting the scope of the article I was writing because I felt more equipped to make a case based on the business than on ethics. Thanks for the nice things you say. I wasn't joking about you contacting ERE to write an article on personal ethics (I assume you are in the industry, I could be wrong). You should do it. It's just a different approach to the same problem, as you state. Think about it (if you are brave) ; )

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

Paul — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:38:56 GMT

I wasn't questioning your personal ethics. That is very clear from your posts. What I probably didn't say very well was that I don't think you can separate the 'what' from the 'how'.

We absolutely agree that the business case for honesty is pretty clear. But ethics and morality is different from personal values (which vary much more widely, and would cover the 'eating meat' issue). The basic moral principles are pretty much the same in all world religions as well as in a secular domain, and the list of things is quite small.

For example, codes of ethics are surprisingly identical in organizations from the Boy Scouts to the US Marines to Christianity to Buddhists. Integrity and honesty show up on everyone's list - the only differences are in ranking. There is a good book by Rushworth Kidder (How Good People Make Tough Choices) that documents this universality. I suspect if you don't see a consensus on this, it is because the terms aren't properly defined.

But if people don't subscribe to these ethics personally, they certainly won't in business either. That's why I think personal ethics goes hand-in-hand with an honesty-is-the-best-policy practice in the workplace.

I did read the exchanges on ERE and you are right. The accusatory finger-pointing was not going to win either side over, but only serve to harden positions. But, how can you tell Dr. Sullivan that he was documenting worst practices, not best practices, without a vehement disagreement?

In any case, I would echo others that I've seen post on your blog - you are a beacon of goodness in a sea of badness. You have a strong sense of right and wrong, a personal brand that you represent consistently, you are responsive and you care. Any two of those would distinguish you from at least half of your peers.

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

Eric Scott — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:18:47 GMT

Heather,

Love your principled stance. And, in the world of branding, you're doing great as a recruiter.

My one nit in all this is the disconnect between your brand and that of MSFTs. When Balmer faces down ugly incidents involving 'talent', e.g. recent recruiting war w/Google in China, one has to wonder how your personal ethics and ways of doing business synch up w/the leadership of MSFT!

Response?

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

HeatherLeigh — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:42:39 GMT

Paul-because 1) you can't get consensus on personal ethics, 2) people feel very strongly about them, especially having theirs come into question and 3) I have no formal training in ethics and don't feel qualified to speak as an *authority* on the topic. Personal ethics, which you are portraying as black and white, are really shades of gray (some people feel that eating meet is wrong, I don't. Some people use "ethics" to justify political view points that I find to be unpalatable). It wasn't a question of whether personal ethics are important (as I mentioned in the article). After seeing people freak out on the ERE discussion board on this topic (finger pointing, arguments based on religion), I felt I could make a business case for honesty in recruiting. Simply, I chose a different topic than "personal ethics". If you feel strongly about it, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the contact info of the editorial person at ERE and maybe you can submit an article. Please don't make assumptions as to *why* I didn't cover personal ethics though. It's as simple as I stated above.I do have personal ethics. I'm content with others judging by my actions. Where they came from and why is personal and not something I feel like I need to share to justify my perspective. If others want to get into that mudpit, that's fine. Not me. The business case for honesty in recruiting is what I wanted to explain.

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

Paul — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 18:39:25 GMT

Excellent article, Heather. You are an outstanding writer - a talent not often appreciated in HR I would guess.

You clearly have strong opinions about lots of things, and express them consistently, which makes me question why you would soften your edge around the question of personal ethics. (You describe them as subjective, as if there was not a very clear line between honest and dishonest).

Corporate ethics as evidenced by actions come from personal ethics and core values. You can't decide these sorts of things at the time of action - they are instinctual actions and reactions based on personal ethics. There is an excellent description of why this is the case in the book "Value Shift" by Lynn Paine. It's kind of like exercise - if you haven't consistently worked out and kept yourself in shape, it will be very hard to suddenly decide to compete in a triathlon. And, if your core values and personal ethics are ambiguous, it will be very hard to do the right thing when faced with a challenging business problem. The pressure to do the wrong thing can be enormous, and if you haven't already worked out where the line is in your own mind, the chances are, you will cross it by default.

As you pointed out, Enron voiced many of the right words, but the individuals mouthing the words didn't believe them personally, and probably encouraged exactly the opposite in the people working for them. Leaders must possess a strong personal moral compass, because even though every individual is different and has a different view of where the line is (that doesn't make it subjective, just fluid), most employees will model the behaviors of those who write their paychecks.

Perhaps you don't want to presume to judge the ethics of Dr. Sullivan or of FirstMerit or of other recruiters you may know who have employed these tactics, or who would turn a blind eye to others doing it so as not to stir up a professional hornet's nest. But don't we have to call a spade a spade if your goal is to encourage honesty and integrity? There can't be equivocation about what honesty and integrity are if we expect people to behave that way.

I think in this case, you put your finger on it. This isn't about being aggressive (which is the "polite" or "business positive" way of describing how these recruiters behaved) it is about misleading, deceiving, manipulating and/or coercing people using the power over dispensing employment. It is the use of deception and the abuse of unequal power that makes it personally unethical (you also rightly point out that it doesn't matter how the person doing it perceives their intent - it is how the person on the receiving end perceives it).

I think that what you desribe as "applying to all of us regardless of our personal ethics" draws attention to this point. The other side will not agree that it applies to them because they do not subscribe to your personal ethics. If one believes that the end justifies the means, or that deception or manipulation of power are OK to exercise in one situation, you will believe it is equally OK in another. (e.g. "Sleep with me if you want this promotion".)

Although I am the first to admit that I don't always do what I believe that I should and live up to my own personal ethical standards, knowing that, acknowledging that and struggling with that are part of personal ethics too. I wouldn't defend a weak moral judgment just because I made it. What troubles me about Mssrs. Sullivan et al is that they not only defend it, they promote bad behavior as being righteous, and good for business. He goes so far in some of his rebuttal responses to other readers of his article as to suggest that ethics has no place in business. It is war, plain and simple, and whatever is necessary to "win" is what you should do.

Have I misunderstood what you meant by not arguing about "personal ethics"? Although I agree with pretty much everything else you said, I don't see how you can have this debate without agreeing on what is ethically right and how you implement that personally.

re: Honesty in Recruiting: Corporate Asset or Quaint Throwaway?

HeatherLeigh — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:05:07 GMT

i changed it