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To Poach or not to Poach - is that Really the Question?

By Kathy Barton, September 20, 2007

Last week on one of our free public webinars someone asked whether I thought it was okay for recruiters to "poach" another company's employees. This got me thinking about where the term "poaching" originates. Here are some definitions:

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Poaching is illegal hunting or fishing. It may be illegal because:

• The game or fish is not in season
• The poacher does not possess a license
• The Hunter used an illegal weapon for that animal
• The animal or plant is on restricted land
• The right to hunt this animal is claimed by somebody
• The means used are illegal (for example, baiting a field while hunting quail, or using spotlights to stun or paralyze deer)
• The animal or fish is protected by law or that it has been listed as extinct animal or an Endangered

As of at least 1990 the verb is sometimes used to refer to the act of hiring employees who are already employed by another company (especially a competitor), orchestrated by a recruiter referred to as a "headhunter".

The origin is pretty interesting. Back in feudal Europe and England, the ruling class owned huge tracts of land, including forests and hunting preserves. Not only did they own the land, they owned all the wildlife that lived on the land. The only people who were allowed to hunt or trap the wildlife were the landowners and their guests. Any serf who was caught catching game on the lord's property was considered a "poacher" and a thief, and was generally punished with fines, imprisonment, deportation, or even hanging. Hunting to feed your starving family was not considered an acceptable justification.

When you think about it, applying the term poaching to recruiting is a bit weird. The parallel concept would be that the company "owns" the employees, and anyone trying to "capture" another company's employee is "stealing" them from their employer. And for much of the history of employment, employers have had the upper hand in the hiring relationship with employees since they made the crucial decision about whom to hire and fire from a seemingly endless supply of labor. People worked for one company for their entire careers, and expected their employer to reward their loyalty with continued employment and benefits. The advent of mass layoffs, cutbacks in retirement benefits, and a shortage of skilled workers changed this equation. Now employees are free agents who don't expect to work for one company for life, take their retirements with them in the form of 401k accounts, know that they could get downsized, and make a conscious decision about whom they choose to work for, and how long they work for them based on increasing their value in the employment marketplace. Not recruiting existing employees, whether from your competitors or from other companies, ignores this new paradigm and gives companies a level of control over their employees and their employees' choices that doesn't (and shouldn't) exist.

A related idea is that it's okay to recruit from a competitor if the employee approaches you, but not okay for you to approach the employee. This just doesn't make sense. The role of a recruiter is to provide people with information about career opportunities that are available to them. Why does it matter whether the employees find this out for themselves, or if you tell them? The underlying belief here is that it's okay to recruit unhappy employees, but not happy ones. If they are unhappy enough to go looking for a new job, and find you, it's okay, but it's not okay if you find them and tell them about a job. What does this have to do with hiring top talent? Many people are ready to move to a job that will give them a clearly superior career opportunity, even if they are not so dissatisfied that they are already looking for a another job.

I also believe that the negative connotations around poaching stem from the days when it was really hard to figure out who were the top performers at a company. So there were all kinds of slightly shady techniques for trying to work your way into a company to find those people. This is another way in which the world has changed. If you believe that hiring from your competition requires questionable behavior, then you don't know enough about today's world of passive candidate recruiting. Finding top people is no longer the hard part. Tools such as LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Google make this easier than it has ever been. Knowing how to get candidates to return your voicemails and emails, and how to network with good people to find more good people is the hard part. You should never have to misrepresent yourself or your company to locate and engage with top people. You shouldn't have to do anything that would cause ethical concerns for you, your candidates, or your management. If, like many recruiters, you don't feel your passive candidate recruiting skills are either up-to-date or up-to-snuff, sign up for our on-line Recruiter Boot Camp.

There are times, of course, when your company has signed agreements with subcontractors, consulting companies, partners, and/or sister organizations that state that you won't approach or offer jobs to their employees. These agreements must be honored, but generally represent a fairly small number of people.

From a purely practical point of view, if you don't recruit from other companies, you just won't find enough top talent. You may be able to find enough average performers, but you won't be able to find the best. Why? About 15-20% of the workforce is actively looking for a job at any one time. They are applying to the jobs that you advertise, they post their resumes on the job boards, they are easy to find because they want to be found. Top performers are under-represented in this group. If this is the only group you are recruiting from (and we know from our Annual Recruiting Survey that this is often the case), you are going to miss the lion's share of top talent. It's semi-active candidates, who look only occasionally and sporadically, and passive candidates, who aren't looking at all but are open to new opportunities, who could be some of your best performers. This represents about 50% of the workforce. Not targeting this group means you aren't finding the kind of talent that can make a significant and appreciable positive impact on your organization's performance. And that is just a crime.