Poaching Talent = Damaging your Competitor

Originally published in my old blog in November 2005

A recent article (Poaching the Best Talent Worldwide) on the Electronic Recruiters Exchange from Dr. John Sullivan leads to this entry. In the article Dr. Sullivan makes the point:
Poaching talent is the practice of proactively targeting and hiring top talent away from a competitor or top firm, with the specific intention of:
– Securing skills or capabilities faster than if you were to attempt to develop talent internally through training and development efforts
– Securing expanded capacity (i.e. more bodies) that will require less ramp up time
– Mitigating high-level talent losses due to attrition
– Damaging your competitors' ability to achieve their strategic objectives

Let me start off by saying that I am a firm believer in targeting your competitor's top talent for your organization. It should be a staple of any organization's talent strategy. Having worked both a 3rd party and Corporate desk I have seen the repercussions of this strategy from both sides. There are a large number of people in this business that believe you shouldn't go after a competitor's talent with the express intent of damaging that organization. What do they think is going to be the result?

Damage will be done. It doesn't matter if it is their top producer, their best pre-sales person, their receptionist, or their marketing leader. Any time a top performer leaves an organization, damage is inflicted upon it. We've all read and seen the stats on productivity of Top Performers vs Average Performers. By saying that you didn't want to inflct damage on the competitor when you recruit from that organization, to me, is nonsense.

Is it any different when you try to recruit an entire development team versus a single person. IMHO no it isn't. As a strategic recruiter your mandate should be to source and secure the best talent for your company/client that will make the organization more productive and more profitable. One aspect of this is taking talent from your competitors. If your competitor has a solid retention program in place this won't even be an issue for them because you won't get their top people (generally speaking). If an organization doesn't realize they are at risk of losing performers, all the better for the top recruiters.

Maybe it is the term "poaching" that gets a rise out of people. Call it what you will, but the end result of stealing, raiding, recruiting, enticing, poaching, offering a better opportunity, soft selling, hard selling, buying, whatever, your competition's talent is that you are damaging that organization.

See it for what it really is and quit playing word games so you can sleep better at night and feel better about yourself.