Is Recruiting Your Competitors’ Employees a Good Idea?
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Our recruiters frequently come across organizations that believe recruiting sales employees from the competition is advantageous. This is understandable.
On the surface, the recruitment strategy of hiring sales representatives from competitor firms has merit. Employers assume that those with experience in a field will carry the following benefits.
- Fewer training hours are required after the recruitment process.
- The experience will allow the sales management team to manage less
- After recruiting sales employees from the competition, those individuals tend sell more than comparative job seekers from dissimilar backgrounds.
Many sales representatives know that a competitor company is an easy way to a bump in salary, whether it be from their new employer or thanks to a competing offer to leverage against their current manager.
Until a hiring manager can really dig into these issues during an interview process, there is little reason to believe that the new employee will be an all-star. Over the past 10 years, our business development recruiting professionals seen little correlation between a sales employee’s ability to succeed and direct pertinent experience in a field.
Possible Legal Hurdles After the Recruiting Process
Often, sales representatives working in competitive industries are required to agree to a legal formality that prevents them from operating against their employer in the near future. This tries to prevent a sales representative from taking clients from their employer and taking it their next job.
Even though most non-competes are unenforceable against employees, more still needs to be considered. These come in the form of ethical questions regarding the sales representative that you’re recruiting.
The full article can be found on KAS Placement’s Forbes Blog under Is Recruiting Sales Employees From Your Competition a Good Idea
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This article was written by our CEO Ken Sundheim and originally appeared in Forbes.