That is completely unethical. So unethical that I'd go out of my way to let people know about this company.
The job search should be at least semi-private. My LinkedIn network are work connections. If I'm leaving my current employer the last thing I want is for someone to contact my manager's best friend or a customer that my current employer is trying to close a deal with ("Oh Ken's leaving? Why? What's wrong with the company? Did he say?").
Especially in the valley, the circles are a lot tighter than you think -- and if you're doing blind calls there's a good chance you just made my prospects at my current job very uncomfortable.
This is a horrible practice and I'd say that I'd recommend to anyone to avoid this place -- unless you're currently unemployed or just don't care.
Also, if someone cold called or emailed me about someone, the first thing I'd do is contact the person in question and let them know someone was snooping about them. I definitely would not answer any questions -- especially if I had a high opinion of the person.
A while back I interviewed at a startup that contacted "someone they knew who worked where I did" who claimed to not even know who I was. The person tried to use it as leverage against me. They were also my bosses boss. I left for somewhere better than both, but the only word I have to describe both is "scum".
Why are you publishing all your professional relationships to the world on LinkedIn and then feeling like your privacy has been violated if someone actually uses that information?
I publicly go to lunch with friends too -- so if you follow me to lunch and then ask some of the people I went to lunch with about how I'd be at this new job --you're saying this is acceptable or simply a natural consequence of going out in public with people?
The name of my child is public record too. So it's OK for you to go by his school and ask his teacher how I am as a parent?
There's a lot of public information that exists. Those who have the inability to recognize that there exists a line between simply unethical and illegal are people I'd prefer not to associate with -- much less work for.
The relationship may be public, but the knowledge that I'm job-hunting should not be. In a similar way, the hiring manager knows who I work for now, but expect them not to tell my employer that I'm job hunting.
Funny you mention that, I once had a company track down and call my mother, who lived in another city. You can bet that the first thing she did was call me afterwards. It doomed my relationship with that company and I told people that story every chance I got, and not a single person wasn't shocked. When I heard the company went bankrupt a year later, probably because it couldn't hire any competent talent, I was relieved.
Contacting your parents and elementary school classmates is fine for an FBI background check as part of getting a top secret clearance. Key elements of that is they tell you in advance they are going to do so, get your permission, and what they find out is held in strict confidence by people trained to keep sensitive information secret. That's not at all the case with random employers calling up people they find you socially linked to.
It happened to me with a recruiter. They were calling people that were somehow connected to me to try to get my phone number. What I found most upsetting was how they treated the people that they called. The recruiter was very persistent, and pretty rude. It was enough to prompt my coworker and another friend to find all instances of their phone number online and try to get it removed (which is generally a good idea).
Well, in Australia at least everything you post to Facebook is (according to the courts) public knowledge anyway.
// not sure if this is a reflection of the techno-cluelessness of the legal system, or a very astute/cynical technical assessment of Facebooks so called security.
Has this happened to any of you? It doesn't seem unethical but is definitely a little sneaky.