Job Poaching

Job hopping, or to use other terminology, the poaching of workers or talent poaching, is the practice of actively soliciting workers from a competitor for a position available in your organization. Skilled personnel job poaching takes place in sectors where there is a high demand for them and the struggle to acquire the desired candidates is intense. Job poaching is carried out by employers to hire best performers, experienced staff, or key personnel from rival companies to gain competitive edge, creativity or fill critical skill gaps. Job poaching may put inter-organizational relationships at risk as well as cause legal tussles on non-compete agreements, confidentiality obligations, and intellectual property rights.

Example of Job Poaching

For example, consider Alpha Innovations, a technology firm that needs to build the software development team to help launch a new product. Beta Technologies, which is Alpha Innovations' competitor, has a talent pool that Alpha Innovations makes use of in the job poaching strategy. The strategy will recruit experienced software engineers and developers from Beta Technologies. Alpha Innovation's recruiters make cold calls to the selected candidates from Beta Technologies, with a view to giving them attractive salaries, room for career advancement, and suitable benefits in order to make them switch firms. Consequently, many talented workers who had been previously recruited by Beta Technologies exit for Alpha Innovations, bringing with them their abilities and competencies, ultimately contributing to the new product's success. Although job poaching may have positive short term gains for Alpha Innovations, it can lead to a weakening of its relationship with Beta Technologies and the result may be ‘talent war’ among the organizations who will strive to employ talent development and retention strategies to counteract their competitors.