Talent poaching: Ethical or unethical?
By Binu Paul, SiliconIndia   |   Tuesday, 24 May 2011, 03:55 IST   |    8 Comments
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Talent poaching: Ethical or unethical?
Bangalore: At a time when organizations are going aggressive to lure the best talents away from their rivals, the question arises again - Is talent poaching is ethical or unethical. While many are of the opinion that talent poaching is often used to kill competition as it's the easiest way to hire trained, experienced and talented people within the industry; experts feel that poaching has become par for the course. However, it's highly important for organizations to keep their best ones happy as the highly-talented employees carry valuable knowledge with them and enhance the performance of your rivals. The most potential and obvious benefit of talent poaching is said to be the skills and capabilities earned at ones, much faster than you can develop internally. It secures an expanded capacity and alleviates the talent losses due to attrition. It also cuts down your competitor's ability to reach their strategic aims. A survey by IT job board Dice has predicted that 2011 is going to witness an IT talent-poaching war as fifty-four percent of surveyed managers and recruiters expect aggressive talent poaching this year. The survey reveals that the most exciting incentives offered to lure the talents are flexible work hours and the opportunity to work with new or emerging technologies. An increase in salary, better career opportunities, promotions, bonuses and opportunity to telecommute are some of other perks offered. However, the good news for the employees planning to jump board is that only 11 percent of respondents said they would not hire a poached employee while 33 percent said they would allow the person to return and the remaining 56 percent said it would depend on the employee. It's a deep rooted belief in the industry that employee poaching is an unethical method of sourcing or hiring. The unethical part of it arguably involves deception of candidates, misrepresentation, hiring solely to harm and even a kind of theft. People who argue in favor of talent poaching feel that it's a legitimate and necessary part of business. They argue that it's not the talent poachers who are unethical rather it's the victims of poaching who, they feel, are only hurting themselves and fail to recognize the reality of shifting talent pools. Hence, the only ethical way to thwart talent poaching is to build strong relationships with employees. Moreover, in this post-recession phase, organizations consider direct recruiting as the only viable approach for business growth. As a matter of fact, despite the biggies preaching the unethical nature of recruiting the best ones out of the competitor's talent pool, experts indicate that everyone does it, some under a different term - lateral hiring - a euphemism for poaching. It's obvious that talent poaching will get more aggressive in the coming days and it's going to be the survival of the smartest in the industry. Your thoughts on this topics are invited:

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