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Glite Dictionary
to poach someone's best employee

to poach someone's best employee

7.1
To try to persuade a top employee from another company to work for you
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : robar a un empleado
  • The tech company tried to poach our best employee by offering her a higher salary and more benefits.

Examples

  • Rival firms often attempt to poach someone’s best employee during industry downturns when morale is low.

  • Don't poach someone's best employee from a competitor!

  • After hearing about his outstanding performance, they set out to poach their best employee with the promise of stock options.

  • It is unethical to poach someone's best employee.

  • Rival firms often attempt to poach someone's best employee during industry downturns when morale is low.

  • The tech company tried to poach our best employee by offering her a higher salary and more benefits.

  • After hearing about his outstanding performance, they set out to poach their best employee with the promise of stock options.

Synonyms

to poach
vsto poach someone's best employee
16 7.0

To take someone else's workers, ideas or clients unfairly for personal gain

aims to recruit a particular top talent by persuasion rather than stealing
to headhunt
vsto poach someone's best employee
2 5.8

To look for and hire a skilled person for a senior job

focuses on persuading a single top talented person from another organisation

Antonyms

to retain
236 3.4

To keep having something such as a job or possession

Surface Forms

poach someone's best employee infinitive

Morphology

poach + someone's + best + employee

The meaning is directly compositional: 'poach' (to unfairly recruit/appropriate) combined with 'someone's best employee' (their most valuable staff member) straightforwardly yields 'recruit away a top employee from another employer.' The context word 'employee' disambiguates other senses of 'poach' (e.g., cooking), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent meanings can infer the MWE.

Etymology

The phrase poach someone's best employee comes from the image of poach as secretly taking the best animal from someone else's land. That's why it now means 'to try to hire away the best employee from another company'.