Why involving lawyers first doesn’t work
Jobster/Rdc and RecruitingBlogs.com have mended ways and that’s good for both of them. You know what would have been better? If JG & JD had worked this out without the need for a threatening letter from an attorney. JG wished that this had stayed a private matter. Well, he should have also wished that he had never sent a threatening letter but that would admit that he actually had some hand in this “mini circus.” Lawyers bring out the worst in people, it throws up a defense mechanism, and it usually throws up barriers to coming to a (less expensive) resolution. That’s why threatening lawyer letters make good press because you essentially have little left to lose if they are going to take you (the little guy) to court or shut you down.
In my line of work, involving lawyers is the last step, not the first. They should have reversed this process with JG talking with JD openly about how he felt he was violating his non-compete and that he was hurting Jobster. In a week or so, if things didn’t go well, it would have at least looked a bit better and they could have had a press release prepared if JD went public. If JG could blog and say “Yeah, I called personally and tried to work it out. I gave him some time to resolve it. It didn’t work out.” Of course, best case scenario (and probably most likely) is that they resolve it before mini circus stage and Jobster gets no bad publicity and gets more visibility into RecruitingBlogs.com.
I imagine some will accuse me of Monday morning quarterbacking this whole and they might be right if this hadn’t played out in the media so often. No less than two weeks ago did Angelina Jolie send the press into circus mode over a hasty letter from her attorneys. And guess what, since Fox had nothing to lose (they had already been barred from interviewing her), they made a big fracas of it and the media as a whole picked it up. Sound familiar?
The recruit-o-sphere is full of honesty
Apparently JD of RecruitingBlogs.com has ticked off JG of Jobster/Recruiting.com because of an apparent non-compete agreement dispute and it has now been made public thanks to JD. Now I have made my views clear on non-compete agreements (short version: they’re stupid and not likely to be worth the paper they are written on), but if Jobster is indeed a WA corp, I imagine they are hoping that threat of litigation is going to give them a bargaining chip because that’s pretty much the only dog they have in this fight.
Recruiting.com is unreadable at this point and completely worthless as a community. I nixed them from my RSS feed a long time ago. Jobster has made all of the decisions that have created Rdc to become what it is today, and if RB.com has gained anything from it, it is thanks to those actions.
RecruitingBlogs.com is closer to what Rdc used to be: a decent community oriented around their user base. I am not one to say that corporate interests in community sites are bad but it is obvious that this one turned out to be a poor decision.
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Bing on wimp bosses
I have an admission to make:
I find Stanley Bing hilarious.
I make no excuses for my poor taste in literature, if you can even call it that. I simply think his caustic wording is refreshing in light of ghostwritten CEO books talking about leadership.
That’s the main reason I wanted to talk about his latest entry about wimp bosses on Vault today.
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Wow, life happens quickly
I honestly can’t believe it has been 20 days since I posted last here. Sorry about the break but things have been a bit crazy lately and yadda yadda yadda. Glad to be back, I have a lot of pent up energy and things to talk about.
The first thing is that I am going to be doing some blogging on Vault.com now. It should be fun as they are really building out their blogging network. You will be able to see my posts on their site but I will always be posting here whenever I post a blog entry of interest there.
My first blog posts talks about Wal-Mart firing an employee for a MySpace bomb threat.
Back from my (non-working) vacation
A vacation is great but it is good to be back.
While I was gone, CM over at Secrets of the Job Hunt posted a podcast featuring yours truly.
I’ll be catching up shortly!
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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