Should I sign a nondisclosure agreement in an interview?
Question:
I've been asked by more than one prospective employer to sign a nondisclosure
agreement (NDA) for the interview. I have a problem with this as I don't feel
they should be sharing any sensitive information to begin with.
I thought I'd bring up the question here, since we all might encounter it at one
point or another. I'm curious what you think about this. What does a company
hope to gain with this? Why would they discuss information during an interview
that they consider proprietary enough to require an NDA?
Reply:
You've put a new spin on a question we've addressed before. Employers want you
to sign an NDA before they hire you.
For those who may not know, an NDA is an agreement you sign promising not to
divulge anything you learn from the party who asked you to sign it. The purpose
is to protect the party's proprietary information. NDAs can be very broad with
regard to what they cover, or they can be narrow. For the person signing it, the
narrower the better.
I can imagine that a company might need an NDA in an interview to protect ideas
and information that will be discussed, but why a company would divulge such
things in a first interview is beyond me. I think that's nuts. They should not
be divulging anything confidential until a serious interest in working together
has been established.
It's more likely that they're doing it because they've heard other companies do
it. In my opinion, this doesn't reflect well on an employer. There's such a
thing as making too much information confidential.
Here's why a job candidate needs to be very careful. Suppose you have knowledge
of a certain technology or technique before you talk with either company A or
company B. Before the interview you sign company A's NDA, but later join company
B, which is already working on something related.
Now you share with company B what you knew all along. You could be in violation
of the NDA you signed for company A?even though you had the knowledge prior to
meeting with company A. An NDA can come back and bite you for reasons you never
anticipated.
We live in an overly litigious society, where lawyers and courts settle
disagreements before people ever take responsibility for working things out on
their own. Judgment is first an individual responsibility, and only in a great
controversy should it be turned over to a court.
I respect the fact that a company's work may be highly proprietary. But I also
expect that two people can discuss a work topic in a way that doesn't jeopardize
the basic rights (and property) of either. Evaluate a company in that light, and
I think you'll feel comfortable that you're making the right decision about
whether to sign an NDA.