This sort of thing speaks volumes about the security that any company should maintain regarding anything worthwhile protecting. It also raises the question of ethics and points out that good ethics are relative. I later discovered that almost every marketing research firm may use similar tactics to obtain information if required as a part of a study. Let's look at a different example closer to home; an example of a technique that might actually be used by a job hunter under certain circumstances. I have seen this technique used by professional headhunters.
A new executive recruiter had been calling the presidents and vice presidents of various firms, asking them directly whether they would like to become clients of his headhunting firm. One vice president of engineering of a petroleum company had no business to give to this neophyte and was particularly rude and abusive about it. He stated not only that his firm did not use headhunters under any circumstances to obtain anyone, but that he refused to talk to headhunters, would allow none of his staff to talk to headhunters, and had threatened to fire any secretary or anyone speaking to headhunters. He then hung up.
The director of the division of the headhunting firm observed what had happened and told the new recruiter that this was the kind of firm to recruit from, in other words, to raid. He asked the new headhunter for the name and the telephone number of the executive he had just talked to. Less than five minutes after the conversation in which this vice president of engineering had insisted that he allowed no one to talk to headhunters, this director had the same person on the telephone and was talking with him, but not as a headhunter. He gave the cover story that he was a university student who had been asked to write a report about petroleum engineering and had been given the name of a petroleum engineer with whom to talk. "However," pleaded the director innocently, "I have forgotten the engineer's name and I am afraid to contact my professor to tell him this." The vice president of engineering then spent the next half hour identifying every single engineer in his company by name and by duty to this "student." At the end of this period the director even had the nerve to ask, "Are you sure that's every single engineer listed in your company?" And the vice president of engineering answered, "Well, everyone except me," and then gave his own name as well. The director then thanked the vice president of engineering, hung up, and presented the amazed neophyte with the names and titles of over 100 different engineers, all of whom were potential recruits for the headhunter's client firms.
I have seen other headhunters claim that they were trying to reach someone in the company whose fender they had dented, or say that they had promised to send a calendar to someone but could not remember the name. Through these tactics, headhunters find initial contacts who may unwittingly help them identify candidates potentially qualified for various jobs all the way from the first line professionals up to very senior positions in management.
Such techniques can be used by anyone and are extremely valuable for obtaining intelligence about a company, which is useful in capturing a superior job. For example, if you could obtain the names of professionals that are working in a company, even if you didn't know them, you could call them and address them by name. You would then be able to ask questions about a position that is open (or one that may be open), about problems with the company, about ongoing problems for which company management is seeking solutions, and various other questions before you have the interview. Again, I don't comment on the ethics here. This is up to you as an individual to decide, but I do point out that these tactics are used frequently by recruiters. They can be adopted by you for integration into your own campaign in a tough job market. They are effective and will help you get a superior job.
