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Glite Dictionary
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poaching

poaching

7 6.3
Recruiting employees or clients from a rival company, often in an aggressive way
  • noun
  • /ˈpoʊtʃɪŋ/
  • Jargon
translation icon : captación
  • After several months, the startup was accused of poaching clients from a well-established firm.
  • combat poaching
  • poaching hotspots
  • poaching activity

Examples

  • Poaching can affect lions directly by decreasing the lion population or indirectly by reducing prey availability.

    Academic text (2018)

  • I've heard that Columbia Law School once threatened to sue Yale Law School for poaching on law applicants who had put in deposits with Columbia.

  • You have two counts against you—trapping out of season and poaching on restricted land.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Finding these signs is aligned with the goal of PAWS—combat poaching to save animals—and thus is proof of the effectiveness of PAWS.

    Academic text (2016)

  • The company faced criticism for poaching talented employees from its competitors.

  • Many businesses resort to poaching skilled workers from rival companies to gain a competitive edge.

Synonyms

headhunting
vspoaching
1 4.0

Searching for and recruiting very skilled people for important jobs like managers or executives

is focused on taking rivals' staff in an often aggressive or unethical way
headhunt
vspoaching
6.7

Looking for and hiring a skilled person for a senior job

is about attracting people or clients away from competitors with dubious ethics
predatory approach
vspoaching
7.4

An aggressive, unfair way of trying to gain an advantage over others in business

targets staff or customers of rivals specifically and implies unethical recruiting

Antonyms

retention
23 4.2

Keeping something so you still have it

How Aggressive

to raid
  • Jargon
12 7.0
poaching
  • Jargon
7 6.3
headhunting
1 4.0

Surface Forms

poaching singular
poachings plural

Morphology

poaching = poach (semi-transparent) = poach + ing

Formed from 'poach' + -ing, but the sense 'recruiting from rivals' is a metaphorical extension from 'stealing/hunting' and may not be obvious to all learners.

Etymology

Poaching comes from hunting, where to poach meant taking an animal from someone else's land like 'stealing' game. That's why poaching also means trying to take workers or clients away from a rival company, often seen as unfair.