I work for company A.

I’m currently on a project for client X (this is the second successful project with client X I’ve worked on).

Seperatly the recruitment department of client X has asked me to apply for a position with them.

I would like the position. Is applying unethical?

When asked about my familiarity with their products how do I answer?

I don’t feel comfortable saying I’m intimately familiar with two of their biggest products (NDA which i take seriously) but at the same time it’s a massive plus for the position (they are looking to bring in-house the work we do for them – my current company know this) and the NDA is with them.

The client is a massive company and I suspect no one has drawn the dots together.

I would imagine both companies have clauses to say they can’t poach each others people?

No, another member of the team moved over 8 months ago.

Depends, what do company X expect you to put on your CV? When Ive been subject to an NDA they’ve subsequently given us very specific wording for our CVs.

Are they really approaching you out of the blue? That seems odd, they wouldn’t be approaching you unless you had relevant experience, which is on your CV which presumably lists them (or a cryptic reference to them) as clients.

I know loads of people in oil and gas contractors who’ve moved over to operators, generally everyone views it as a good thing. Eventually they come back in 20 years with specilist knowlege of the opperators tech too so everyone wins.

TINAS – former process safety engineer for a polymer compounding extruder plant in S.Wales, nudge nudge wink wink.

I would imagine both companies have clauses to say they can’t poach each others people?

Pretty standard to have such a clause, although very hard to enforce in practice as if an employee wants out, you can’t do much to stop them leaving….

What MrChrist said.

That not withstanding if the NDA you’ve signed is from company X then you won’t be breaking it as you’ll be talking to them about it, not a third party.

If it’s with company A then yeah you could be at risk of breaking it but TBF you can probably tell them enough without going into too much detail in the actual interview to break the NDA.

Respond by telling them you work for company A and that you believe you’re well qualified but fettered by an NDA relating to your recent experience – and are they still interested ?

If they can’t join those dots, ….

I’m fairly sure it’s completely separate as it’s another countries HR chasing me (the main EMEA one), I do have very, very relevant experience for the role, it’s also been advertised for 30+ days and I think the candidates applying were not right (it’s an odd mix they want) and they have trawled LinkedIn in my country and got to me.

There is nothing on my LinkedIn profile about the clients I’ve worked with, just abilities and job titles.

I like the response by scardypants – that’s the kind of answer I think would be appropriate.

If the NDA is between A and X, how can you be in breach? Is it really X approaching you or some affiliate/wholly owned subsidiary? If so, are they covered under the agreement?

The poaching bit may come under an MSA or other service level agreement. Are you party to all the contracts which exist or simply made vaguely aware of an NDA being in place?

Check the NDA to make sure you understand where you stand re: the above (what you are not allowed to talk about to whom), but I would be amazed if you couldn’t have a normal interview interaction.

I would say that the risk here is to (and therefore from) your current employer – they will be more concerned about you sharing THEIR intellectual property (systems, processes etc) with a client, thus allowing them to pull this program of work back in house.

But if that decision has already been made/communicated, I really wouldn’t worry about it.

IANAL obvs

It’ll depend basically on 3 things.

1) exactly what the NDA says
2) if the NDA is sufficiently restrictive to create a problem here, is it legal or would it constitute an illegal restriction on your right to work?
3) What effect does the spirit of it have?

That third one is quite often the most significant; my current binding NDA is pretty weak, but, if I were to break it in an interview in my sector then very few places would hire me. The nature of it is that breaking even the spirit of the NDA basically marks me as someone you don’t really want working for you. “Oh hi! You’re someone that’ll happily share corporate secrets? Well we will certainly hire you and tell you all of our secrets so you can give them to someone else”

But you can usually generalize your way around the subject. In this case here it’d be very uncommon to be completely unable to discuss your work- and hard for any such agreement to be legal. But giving them information on your familiarity with their products wouldn’t usually be a restricted piece of information; you’re telling them about you, not about your current employer.

So you have an NDA with company A (your employer) about product Z that you’re helping to deploy into client X? Absolutely bonkers if there’s an NDA with you but not a poaching clause in the contract with client X.

That said I agree with scaredypants’ advice – also how well do you get on the client X team, is it something you can mention to one of them to get more info on the position?

Applying and getting the job is entirely ethical…happens all the time. As long as soon as you are offered the job and accept it you declare that to your current employer as they will most likely want to put you on gardening leave to serve out your notice. Imparting sensitive and private data and knowledge once in the new role from your current role would not be. They want you for your knowledge of how the company you work for operates and the network of people you have within the company and general understanding of how the company fundamentally works and operates. Clearly walking out the door with USB sticks full of sensitive and private data might be frowned upon somewhat.

Agree with most.

You can say you have intmiate knowledge of the company, but are unable to discuss in any detail why – they will already know who you work for, but possible advise what departments/arm you know the most.

If it’s a new job, but not knowingly specific to the project between A and X -it’s just moving roles. It’s unlikely any NDA will have clauses around individuals and jobs, certianly none that i’ve drawn up and signed have (all major oil co.s). However, i would think about your current contract and any clauses around how long you ned to leave it before you work with existing clients and/or competitors. If Company A feel they will lose out on revenue, then i expect they will be peed.

I would imagine both companies have clauses to say they can’t poach each others people?

May not be enforceable though. I work for a big company that works with a lot of customers, I am pretty sure there’s a clause in my contract saying I can’t work for a competitor.
But people leave for competitors and customers all the time, including one of my mates, so I am not sure anyone really cares.

Your company may take a different view though!

No, another member of the team moved over 8 months ago.

Can you phone them up and ask how they handled it? Or is that too obvious?

Do you think you can say

“My current projects are subject to NDA so am not able to discuss them at this time. Please however consult Mr. X, from company X (Swedish Department of Innuendo) who may serve as a suitable reference for my experience”

??

Commercial Manager here…

The NDA isn’t really the issue here but I would be careful about disclosing specifics about your companies IP, aside from that which is presumably being licensed to the client or being developed by the project.

If there is an agreement between the Client and the Supplier that neither one will recruit from the other, the chances of a supplier kicking off to a customer that they tempted you away is basically nil.

What might be an issue is if there are any clauses in you contract about going to work for a competitor/client, but there are ways around that.

Unless you are going to be using your current employers IPR or taking some of their client business from them then you have little to worry about. The prospective employer in-housing isn’t infringing on this. Restrictive covenants on employment contracts are difficult to make stick. Alternatively, your old employer is prepared to pay for you to have gardening leave between roles.

Just back from work

I don’t think I have to worry about IP, as it belongs to the client. We have taken their product and massively improved the reliability to where it’s fully commercial instead of being at constant risk of failure (that’s basically what my company does).

The project is at an end and we are in the process of a full knowledge transfer to the client, should be complete in 4 months.

The client wants someone with my knowledge/skills for other similar projects in the future, not necessarily at my company.

I’ve asked the member who left how they did it but haven’t heard a reply yet. The recruitment department is 100% the client so I’m covered there too?

The NDA is quite generic, with nothing about moving to the client in it, same with my ancient contract.

Freedom of movement for employment whilst not defined in law is almost a given right and the knowledge you have gained relates as much to the client’s product as much as it does to your current employer. I used to set up NDAs in a previous role and essentially the really tight clauses related to the definitions of intellectual property and ‘poaching’ business above all else because it was really difficult to make anything else ‘stick’