Luring employees from the competition and attracting talent to join your company with flexi-benefits, better compensation and better job roles is a key trade tactic followed by many organisations.

This practice of alluring talent from the competition is followed with a thought if some bits to competitor’s proprietary information and knowledge could be accessed by hiring the key workforce, who makes possible the business dream.

Most employers fail to consider and reconsider their decisions on hiring top talent from the competition on these 5 critical factors. They are:

1. What value will this talent add on bring to your company? Most employers ignore this aspect of access to company proprietary information. Engineers who are hired with significant years of experience can pose risks if they have been diligently working on a technology or software that competes with your own framework.
2. Ensuring employee’s integrity. Most employees think they will be valued more for their contributions and experiences, since they are being poached or hired from the competition and possess significant industry experience and knowledge over their peer groups. They also come with an extra zeal of confidence to spill the beans of your competitors. Do you think you can trust such employees who lack integrity when they move on to better jobs? What if they choose to quit your company in the near future and your proprietary information gets public? What make you believe that these employees who join your company bring in original ideas to the table and are not stolen from across the street?

See: Hiring and developing financial talent in Asia

3. How do you check for non-compete agreements? You and your company could be under the legal scanner if you hire people bound by non-compete agreements. You should review the actual legal document, before bring such talent onboard from the competitor.
4. Bringing someone from the same industry can increase your chances of stolen secrets or plan that are currently under implementation by your competitor. These ideas lack originality and implementing such plans is putting your business at bigger risks. Instead if you choose to hire talent from different industries, you can broaden your mental horizons to seek new ideas and perspectives that have never been implemented by competitors or those that have failed in the recent past.
5. Always look forward to bringing in new talents and newer ideas instead of the same old ones. Possess a vision to integrate new capabilities and talent instead of hiring from the competitors. You cannot trust them and you never know if your ideas are original and unique to distinguish your brand from the competition.
6. Look before you leap and think twice before you seek. The most important thing is to think if the candidate you’re eyeing to poach from the competitor is worth the trouble and efforts. You also need to do background reference checks to see if the candidate fits with your company culture, just because the candidate could seek experience working for a competition doesn’t mean they are a perfect fit for the job role in your enterprise.

Think twice and reconsider, evaluate the pros and cons of hiring a talent from the competitor. Evaluate if this talent is worth the risk business undertakes? Remember, attractive compensation always lures, but always seek for hidden passion and drivers that motivate the employee to perform better besides the revenue perks and benefits to recruit the prospect on board. Cautious hiring is the way to go!

Also read: Top 10 Talent Trends Shaping the World of Work and HR in 2015