Shauna Moerke is…

I’m a little late to the game on this one, my Google Reader got backed up for a while, but I recently read this post by Kerry over at her blog Clue Wagon.

Now this may not be true, but basically this guy wanted to get a leg up on his competition so he put out an ad for a job similar to the one he wanted and solicited resumes, with salary information, in order to find out who his competition was. It turns out he did get the job.

Some of you may think, Cool! I should do that. Frankly, I think this guy crossed the line and it bothers me. Here’s why:

1. He misrepresented himself to the job seekers for personal gain. Lame and dishonest.
2. He obtained sensitive information. Now, nothing he got from them is anything that people don’t routinely put on the Internet anyway. Hell, my resume is online in several places, and I have a Linkedin profile, but salary information? And either way, there are a lot of people who would be pissed if they found out they sent this information to some random guy, not a company.
3. There were other ways he could have gained salary information and other ways he could have prepared for this job that did not require dishonesty.

Ultimately though, this is a question of integrity. If you are willing to go this far just to get the position, what are you willing to do to keep it, much less get a promotion? If I had a candidate and I learned they did this, I wouldn’t hire them, and if I had an employee and I found out they had done this, I would watch them like a hawk. There is a line out there, and this is crossing it.