The term employee poaching is used to describe practices that involve companies hiring employees from their competitors. Employee poaching oftentimes occurs in high-growth industries that rely on employees with specialized skills.
Also known as employee raiding, employee poaching is the practice of aggressively recruiting talented employees from competitors. The term gained notoriety in 2010 when it was revealed that a number of companies attempted to suppress the recruitment of their high-tech employees. Some of the better-known parties to the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation include Apple, Google, Intel, Intiuit and eBay. These companies subsequently agreed to no longer engage in no-poaching agreements.
When an employer loses employees to competitors, they incur a number of expenses; this includes recruiting, retraining, as well as sign-on bonuses. Companies can attempt to legally suppress employee poaching in a number of ways:
affirmative action, applicant pool, job hunter, networking, retainer search firm, contingency search firm, cronyism, employee referral program, executive recruiter