Talent poaching is very common in outsourcing hot beds of India, China, Philippines and other smaller IT oriented markets. This problem is more rampant when the market gets competitive. The supply and demand ratio creates a conducive atmosphere for poaching from each other. As the outsourcing percentage goes up calling for larger and qualified positions to be filled rapidly, this problem gets manifold. It is mostly movement from larger firms to small firm that happens, very little goes the other way.

The most common bait is a stiff raise, a promotion, or a visit onsite at client location. For those are struck in unreasonable positions this becomes an easy choice to bail out and get into a new opportunity. The fact that those resources coming from larger and well established organizations can hit the ground running from day one offers an attractive incentive.

It is not uncommon to see an IT consultant in outsourced firm who has 10 job changes in 10 years often working for a year or less and keep moving. Lack of career guidance and not knowing the damage they are doing to their long term career is ignored till they realize the damage is already done. In the similar light the recruiting agents overlook this fact to fulfill their short term needs and fill client requirements and grab the money on the table.

Recent steps by larger outsourcing firms to collaborate amongst each other and fight this battle together is paying some dividends. Also with economy slowing down it is hampering resources from bailing out. Lack of confidence that they may be left in lurch is forcing them to stay back in their well-entrenched positions unless the carrot is attractive enough and confidence levels to go with it is high. The days of HR agents standing outside major IT firms offering immediate raise and other perks as promises are almost over.

Big providers end up losing their talent to poaching which is translates into monetary loss and they end up doing the same to beat the trend at times. Overall this leaves a negative trend in the industry, this is a major contributor to the attrition percentage of top firms often hovering around a unhealthy 20% in some cases.

Poaching doesn’t really help anyone in particular. it does help some short term to fill a void but has consequences down the line. It encourages ill equipped and inexperienced resources to capitalize on the situation, doesn’t allow resources to get a solid experience that they can count on leveraging for delighting their clients.

Recruiting staff should pay closer attention to relaxing the resumes to ensure they are not aiding this problem in pursuit of short term staffing requirements. Using independent recruitment agents needs to be governed well to make there are no gaps in soliciting and proposing candidates. The problem of resumes being padded up is not uncommon, the lack of verification mechanism helps defaulters to get away.

Since this aids attrition, it makes sense to keep an eye on resource profile to weed out those that jump ship often. Remember every new employee addition and departure is an overhead given the number of touch points it has thru HR/Payroll systems and it gets expensive at some point and not economical to indulge in poaching as a substantial means to fill your knowledge gap. This problem doesn’t go away complete, as the economy rebounds and more jobs move offshore it will comeback all over again. It is better to have a plan to deal with this and ensure there are checks and balances to make sure recruitment teams are following it in letter and spirit.