If I apply for a job within my industry, can a potential employer tip off my current employer that I'm looking for other employment?

July 6, 2010 9:49 AM

What are my legal protections as far as confidentiality when I submit a resume?

I recently learned of a job opening at a company that I am very interested in applying for (it fits the criteria of the type of position I've been looking to land for some time now). The complication: The current company I work for is a reseller of this company's products. My question is, are there any sort of legal protections in place when a person submits a resume that would prevent, for example, someone at this company from tipping off my boss or anyone else in my company that I've applied for this position?

I understand that the relationship between the two companies might be a hindrance to my being considered for the position, but I'm specifically interested if simply applying could have any possible detrimental effects to my current position or is there a legal requirement of confidentiality that protects me.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Any protections are going to be contractual and/or best practices, not strictly a matter of law. You submit your resume to a potential employer, they may decide to keep it private--indeed, many do exactly this to avoid alienating potential employees--but there's no law that says they have to.*

This is actually part of a larger problem: people generally expect that they have far greater rights to confidentiality and privacy than they actually do.

You can probably solve this with a phone call. Something along the lines of "Hey, I'd like to submit my resume, but I'm a little worried about my current employer finding out if I don't wind up working for you. Is there any way we could keep this confidential?"

*Or at least I'm not aware of one.
posted by valkyryn at 10:02 AM on July 6, 2010

Looking to move upstream from the reseller channel is not a unique circumstance. It happens all the time. The odds of the company purposely outing you are slim. More likely will be political issues internally that might make it hard for them to "steal" an employee from one of their channel partners. It's unlikely that there is any outright prohibition against hiring from the channel, which is why I say it will be more political than anything else.
posted by COD at 10:15 AM on July 6, 2010

This can absolutely happen. And it did, to me, in a job where I wasn't satisfied with my (fairly new) boss, and that boss used it against me to make the remainder of my time at that job miserable, after I declined to accept the new job. Just so you know.
posted by Brittanie at 11:27 AM on July 6, 2010

There are no legal protections whatsoever. Best practice would normally make it pretty unusual for a company to pass on the fact that you're job hunting to your current employer. Mainly because they wouldn't want any risk that you would sue them later if you suffered in any way at your current job due to their actions (IANAL, but as a business owner you just never want to do anything that could potentially cause a legal liability if you can avoid it). That said, not every company follows best practice and you can't really protect against the case of your resume passing the desk of someone that knows you and your situation and wants to make your life difficult.

My advice is if possible make personal contact with the hiring manager, share with them your concerns about confidentiality and with their agreement send your resume directly to them.
posted by Long Way To Go at 12:37 PM on July 6, 2010

There are no legal protections. You take a risk by submitting it.
posted by Flood at 1:18 PM on July 6, 2010