- It sends a message to the competitor that you play hard ball when you are attacked.
- If you do it to one competitor, it might serve as a preemptive message and therefore discourage others from competing directly with you.
- It weakens your competitor.
- It’s hard to recruit recruiters anyway, so you might as well target the ones that hurt you the most.
- It helps you learn your competitors recruiting strategies and tools.
- It helps you learn which of your employees that your competitors were recruiting.
If your current recruiters argue against this tactic on the premise that it might foster retaliation by other firms, explain to them that you target your competitor’s customers all the time and the retaliation argument never comes up there. If they are still reluctant, tell them that is why you have the best team and strategy the competition will only make us stronger. If that argument fails…fire them and send them to your competitor! Once the war has started…you must attack your enemy at every opportunity. Steal Their Best Recruiters: Retention Whenever you lose a key employee it is essential that you find out not only why they left, but also who recruited them away. It is even more important, however, to identify the recruiters who are targeting your employees long before anyone leaves. Encourage top talent to track which recruiters call them, what arguments they make, and the effectiveness of their sales approach. By developing a “who’s who” list you can then train your phone screeners (with caller ID) on who the enemy is! In addition, by identifying the top arguments made by a competitor’s recruiters you can develop a counter/blocking strategy for each argument. A New Competitor When a new firm tries to open a new facility in your neighborhood, it is essential that you act quickly before they get a foothold. You might start by targeting the first “scout” recruiter they send to the area. You might even target all of their new recruiters as soon as they come on board (if you are the “Rambo-type” and you want them to scale back on their expansion plans). At the very least, you need to identify and protect the key talent at your firm that they are likely to target. Summary If everyone has an equal team of good recruiters it will be a long and grueling recruiting battle. However if your firm has all of the best recruiters you will win the talent war hands down! Those with the best recruiters win…it’s that simple.