Shameful Behavior

Frankly, there really is no other way to describe the incident reported to me last week by Pat Grillo, president and CEO of Atrion Communications Resources (ACR) and a CRN Editorial Cabinet member. Here&s his beef: Shortly after one of his newer vendor partners insisted he train one of his engineers to the tune of $2,500 (not including travel expenses) and after also requiring ACR to purchase demonstration equipment, this vendor actually had the gall to turn around and recruit that same engineer. Ultimately, the monetary carrot was too big for the ACR employee to refuse and he opted to take the offer. And needless to say, Grillo is hopping mad at the vendor, although he stopped short of sharing its name for publication.

Normally, mind you, ACR doesn&t agree to pay for training, but because it had a customer who insisted on the formality, Grillo relaxed his stance.

Now, Grillo is a businessman, and he certainly understands the competitive hiring environment in his corner of the world—security. But when he consulted some of his peers in the 1NService network, which operates cooperatively across various regions of the country, he found the practice of vendors poaching solution provider personnel seems to be on the rise. Probably a sign of the improving market.

In a perfect world, this wouldn&t happen—at least not in stealth mode. One of Grillo&s other vendors, Packeteer, has a stated policy not to hire from its solution providers. Occasionally, it makes exceptions: When another one of Grillo&s engineers expressed interest in a Packeteer position, the vendor wouldn&t advance the discussion until it called Grillo and was assured he was on board with the idea. Packeteer even made him sign a waiver.

So, my point is, this sort of thing will sometimes occur. But it should happen aboveboard and especially not right after a solution provider has helped fund that candidate&s skill set. Shame on vendors for doing otherwise.

Who&s bullying you? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, doesn&t mind hearing from tattletales at [email protected].