In the interests of public safety I hear-by rename the Rolladex Party to the Blackberry Party.

Although it can be a highly effective tool to gather names, this idea has considerable drawbacks both from a recruiting perspective and perhaps even more so from the standpoint of building and preserving team morale.

I will limit my comments to the latter:

As the article points out, the pressure is the reason these ‘parties’ are successful (by the way, I think that’s what Sen. Joe McCarthy used to say.) What is overlooked is most people don’t want information extracted from them under pressure.

It will probably be labeled internally as a way to avoid paying referrals by forcing people to knuckle under and download their own personal network in front of their peers.

The article does not acknowledge that most of us know/like people with whom we would choose not to work. Nor does it recognize, people also have mentors or know others who might be better for the job, and find themselves trying to escape another’s shadow. But by using an employee’s OWN MANAGER to browbeat them into participating in sharing personal information for the ‘good of the team’, you will lower the feeling of mutual respect so important in functional work groups.

Another solution, which would probably be received better than applying pressure to employees in a group setting for cake and punch; download all address books on company computers - after all, it is the company’s property, as is the information it holds. At least then you can perhaps deflect the impending animosity to the corporation rather than creating/increasing the perception of a manipulative Manager.

However, as a TPR, I welcome the idea. I would love to talk to candidates within 2-3 weeks of this ‘Party.’ Taking up this line of discussion, a TPR could really gain traction with a few employees by exploring their emotions after such an event. Then we’d have a different kind of extraction party…

After reading this article, I’m not swayed that if you can’t coax names out of your current employees with a financial reward, extracting information under pressure is a better idea.

Happy Hunting!