Is this ethical? (applying to work for a potential vendor)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I work for a newspaper. 'Nuff said. I have survived multiple layoffs, I know management doesn’t want to lose me yet, I know my job is safe for probably another year or more.

I don’t know if the paper will still be here and still be owned by the same (privately held) company for even another 6 months.

My parent company is thinking of entering into an agreement with a software vendor for a very large software project. This software vendor (you’ve all heard of it, not Microsoft) is doing very well these days, thank you very much, and one of my company’s requirements for this project is that they hire a media expert as their business analyst to help find out and flesh out our requirements.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. About half my job is as an internal business analyst, and I would be (if I say so myself) an excellent choice for this position.

So would it be unethical of me to find out who in the software vendor company would be running this project, and send this person my resumé unsolicited? This would require some small amount of inside information to find out who this person would be, and I think I can get that through my contacts in our IT department. I don’t know that they would hire me, but I think it’s worth a shot. But if the vendor is likely to think that me applying for a job based on that inside information is a little sleazy, they would probably be much less likely to hire me.

Clear as mud? What do you think about this situation?
Roddy

2

This comes up frequently on the software vendor side of things. With a big software project, it would almost always benefit them to hire someone away from the customer to help with implementation. However, poaching from the customer is generally bad form. So they sometimes have norms, sometimes even formal policies (more likely the more truly huge the client relationship is) against doing this.

On the other hand, you work for a newspaper. Internal business analyst is not the most core position to their ongoing operations (I say that having been in a similar role). If your employer would like to see you in the new role for their own benefit in having a good software implementation, they could perhaps facilitate the transition.

Bottom line, I think you should check for anything in the Ts and Cs that would prevent them from hiring you, then apply. If you work for a newspaper, I’m guessing TPTB won’t be shocked that you are looking.