I agree. Google should have done their homework before contacting a past employee (including contractors). Google as a large organization should know why people left their company and the context of situations around it. Some employees aren't vocal about it, but I don't think this is the case.
you're treating the company as monolithic, and it's not. every group has their own hiring practices and contractors, and manage it differently. i came across this when a bunch of infosec people (myself included) got spammed for entry level jobs. every group has their own targets, methods, faults and strengths. it's just how it is. can't fault the entire company for one bad incident. if you do have concerns, reach out to people and let them know their tactics are turning good candidates off. that gets attention, and that gets changes.
Your right, but Google still has polices and procedures to follow for hiring that do blanket across the company. It could be some thing like, do not contact former employees unless a human vets it.
In a situation with former employees, you have to take into account all that has happened with them. Because the employee sure will (for better or worse).
If you have different groups operating for hiring, they need tools and info to work better. I'm not faulting google for this incident, I just think it could be done better.
At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them? The amount of effort it would take to throughly research every recruitment letter recipent seems like it would be a largely pointless endeavor with minimal returns. Most people aren't going react negatively to an email feeler and the ones that do are already a lost cause.
>At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them?
So that they don't write blog posts like the one we are commenting on? So they don't actively try to convince other (possibly talented) potential employees to ignore your recruiting efforts?
The entire comments section here seems to be "is Google a horrible company to work for and does Google+ suck, or are they merely ok?" If you're looking for new talent, wouldn't you rather have prospective employees asking "is Google a fantastic company to work for or an outstanding company to work for?"
They need to improve their recruitment emails and they could by cross reference their list with a list of people who have left your company at least. Personal emails can be collected on exiting the company if Google needs to contact you.
The only thing on the line is reputation and people don't like to be "spammed" unless they ask for it.
