Where’s The Boundary?

A man has been accused of stealing clients using LinkedIn. In this instance, the person involved is a recruiter and he allegedly ‘linked’ to clients while working at one company and then left to start a rival firm - with his contacts from LinkedIn.

Is this data theft? Or is this something that people used to do all the time but because it wasn’t on the ‘web’ people couldn’t find out about it? I think it is the latter. We all create contacts while at work, and some are more organized than others and file them, others, like myself, have a large pile of business cards with notes on them. I guess that if you are a recruiter, you too would have a large pile of business cards - and if you invite people on LinkedIn, well, isn’t that also something we all do?

Should companies look at banning LinkedIn, in the same way as they did with FaceBook? Only to find it wasn’t practical, people would spend more time finding a way around the system, than they would using it - so we have seen a reverse of this trend. So, no, it shouldn’t be banned. Should it be subject to (yet another social networking) policy? Something that defines the boundary between work and not-work. Perhaps… but I would think that people would just add the contacts while at home. I don’t think you can be banned from doing that after all it’s what LinkedIn is all about - keeping up with friends and colleagues in a business context. Maybe companies need to create their own ‘company’ LinkedIn accounts - so that, if nothing else, they have a copy of the information as well.

The way to look at this is that when someone new joins your company, they bring with them their contacts - rather than when they leave, they take them away.

June 9, 2008 | Filed Under data-loss 

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One Response to “Where’s The Boundary?”

  1. ID on July 21st, 2008

    When asked by an end-client how I landed a consulting gig in their office, I explained that the HR person at the outsourcing company found me on linkedin. Then there was a firestorm (from the HR person) accusing me of trying to use linkedin to steal the client. It was very odd.

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