On poaching 📛

To start off with, let’s first define which domain of poaching I’m referring to. According to Merriam webster , it is defined as “ to attract (someone, such as an employee or customer) away from a competitor”

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been coming across articles/ announcements/ reading through random reddit posts on how people are being “poached” to other companies during these times. After all, we are still in the first half of the year and budgets are fresh.

If you do a little digging ⛏️, you’ll find that most of these articles are written by the owners/ founders themselves and none from people who are supposedly being “poached”. Go figure.

The trigger that caused me to write this: 2 days ago, I was forwarded an “announcement” 📳 where a person proudly proclaimed their employee being poached by another company etc etc. In a nutshell, the entire post was a basic humble brag and also displayed a stark shot of narcissim.

I know this person in question and while I do have no professional or personal respect towards them (keeping gender ambiguous here), I gave them the full benefit of the doubt until I read the entire excerpt.

Here are 2 problems with using the term “poaching”

1. Objectifying 👺:

By utilizing the term “poaching”, the person in question is essentially being reduced to an object that is supposedly being “bid” on and has been won/lost.

If being poached was truly a thing to be proud about- there would be more real stories about it ✒️

Asides from objectifying, it also shows a false sense of support. Most of these articles tried to highlight and “cheer” the person on in their future plans- in about the last 20% of their written monologue. The first 80% was spent in reminiscing about how they were responsible to bring out the “star” and “rough diamond”.

2. Excuse for hiding noxious behavior 🦠:

The fundamental truth is- no company or person can poach anybody. If somebody wants/ decides to leave a particular workplace it is because of a reason- be it because of uncalled behavior/ stressful person/ better opportunities. The reasons are endless.

The hard pill to swallow is that the current employer/ workplace just didn't cut it out anymore and by quickly proclaiming and hiding behind the poaching excuse, they are essentially just calling themselves out 📣📣

To wrap this up like my favorite subway- Use the toppings to make the end product better. Not the other way around 🥪

Shraddha Chaurasia

Reeling ideas here-https://www.instagram.com/troveofvisuals/