Transforming education transforming India

TERM PAPER: Management

Topic: Talent Poaching

SUBMITTED BY:-
SUBMITTED TO:-
Name: -Nitish Pathania Mr.
Himanshu Jindal
Sec: -K7802-A06 Dept.
Of Management
Reg. No. : -10803694

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

As The Saying goes

“No Work Is Done Without Cooperation”

So here I take the responsibility to thank all the helping hands who hole heartedly worked
to help me in completion of this work up till now. I thank my parents and my all family
members, my fellow classmates and all my friends. I also thank my microbiology lecturer
Mr. Himanshu Jindal who help all of us to make our concepts very clear and make as
aware how to tackle the problems etc.

Thanking You Nitish Pathania

Contents:
1. Introduction: Talent poaching:

2. Root cause of talent poaching:

3. Talent Management Concept and definition:

4. Creative Tips for Poaching Talent:

5. Poaching Talent = Damaging your Competitor:

6. A Primer on Poaching:

7. Poaching An Unstoppable Global Trend:

8. Three Dominant Poaching Strategies:

9. The “Honey” Strategy: Six Primary Channels

10. Different Sources To Get Talented People:

 11. Examples and case studies of Talent Poaching:

• Silicon Valley Talent Poaching Highlights:

• News International’s Group HR Director set to join Vodafone:

• McDonald's Talent Case Study

• Report: Apple, Google agreed not to poach each other's workers

12. Summary:

13. Conclusion:

14. References:

Introduction:
Talent: Talent is an attribute of high mental & artistic ability with special aptitudes. A talent is a
person who creates value in an organization such that it achieves success. Talent seems to be a
rare & precious thing bestowed on few special, far away people. They are different! Knowledge
is what you gain as you come across various facts, events and theories in life. Skill is how you
use this knowledge. The difference between knowledge, skill, attitudes and talent can be
expressed as follows;
Knowledge: something you know.
Skill: something you do.
Attitude: something you have.
Talent: something which is inborn in you.

Talent poaching:
Losing employees to competitors and software and BPO firms is common in channels; but now
partners are increasingly finding their employees poached by their own vendors and distributors
The term 'employee poaching' can be defined as an act of enticing key employees to move from
one firm to a competitor. It has emerged as the biggest HR challenge for enterprises, both big
and small, across all industry verticals.

In the recent times, the aviation sector has been the worst hit, and state-owned airlines have lost
several of their in-flight crew and ground staff to the new airlines. Retail is likely to emerge as
the next hotspot for poaching, as large players enter the fray and roll out their stores.

The IT industry has traditionally been a happy hunting ground for poachers, for obvious reasons.
Attrition rates of software and BPO companies have always been steep compared to the rest of
the industries.

In 2008, the top five software export firms are expected to hire 95,000 employees. With the
domestic IT industry also on an upswing, skill-shortage (and subsequently, poaching) will
assume larger proportions.

Root cause of talent poaching:

Often, we come across hiring managers complaining about talent poaching by their competition.
An easy hire would be to make a +10 per cent offer to the people and woo them to your side. The
same holds good for your competition too. How do you eliminate/minimize talent/people
poaching?

The real value-adding positions are unique to each business and are tightly integrated with their
business models. Poaching will seldom help fill such positions. A meaningful talent search is
needed to ensure value generation by that position. It is difficult to find an exact or near-exact
match in the open market.

The world is opening up with global opportunities. It is difficult to tie employees up for long in
one place unless they see it as home. The HR challenge should be to make the job/position
meaningful rather than to entertain poaching. With rapid obsolescence of business models, the
hiring manager's focus should be on role design and engaging the right people.

Talent Management Concept: Every organization must identify its competent employees who
are critical for the organization. Competency includes knowledge, skill, attitude, and talent.
Talent management is a process which makes the organization identify talented and critically
needed people and efforts are made to retain them in the organization. Decisions about talent
management shape the competencies that organizations have and also their ultimate success.

Definition of Talent Management:

- The concept of talent management is a conscious, deliberate approach undertaken to attract,
develop and retain people with the aptitude and abilities to meet current and future organization
needs.
- Talent Management, by definition, means nurturing and developing those people identified as
having ability and potential, and it should form part of any organization recruitment and
retention strategy.

It is observed that talent wars have led the corporate world to pay special attention towards talent
management in recent times. In addition, the talent poaching has led to high attrition rates
affecting the functioning of the firms and reduction of outputs. Retention of talent has become
important and periodic analysis is required to ascertain the causes of attrition. Talent has been
identified by them as a critical success factor.

Details of other findings are summarized as follows:

(i) Approach to Talent Management. The organizations were aware that mere academic
excellence and qualifications are not adequate for managers. Good managers must be
good leaders as well. They must have the skills, mental ability and special aptitudes to
derive performance from the employees through motivation and run an organization
which can proudly boast of good employee relations and a conducive working
environment.

(ii) It was found that most organizations were facing the shortage of talent and are making
best efforts to identify talent and their retention in the organization.

Creative Tips for Poaching Talent:

The top prospects in the job market may be happily employed by your competitors. Here are nine
ways to win over the "passive candidate"
The tightening economy has put the brakes on hiring for many employers, but some professions
and skill sets remain highly sought after. Some 43% of corporate recruiters anticipate a rise in
staff levels in 2008, according to a recent study by career Web site JobFox. Software designers,
nurses, and accountants, among many other specialized and technical professions observed.

1. Target

After job-posting sites turned up few qualified candidates, spent time learning their backgrounds
and interests from social networks and personal blogs, and airmailed each one a personalized
iPod, complete with artistic packaging and a recorded message from CEO Mark Kern. More than
90 recipients responded to the pitch, three left their jobs to come on board, and many more
potential hires discovered the company through word-of-mouth buzz generated by the search.

2. Speak in Code

People who are proven in their profession are bombarded by messages from recruiters, so it's
important to stand out from the pack. When game maker Electronic Arts (ERTS) needed to staff
its Canadian office with ASCII programmers, it worked with the Vancouver office of ad agency
TBWA to design a coded message that only potential hires would be able to decipher. This
contains the ASCII code for "NOW HIRING."

3. Join the Conversation

Social media sites let recruiters join in an informal conversation with potential hires. Global
auditor Ernst & Young has created groups on Facebook, where current employees share
company news and prospective employees sign up for internships and events, and hear about job
openings around the world. Professional networking site LinkedIn and fast-paced microblogging
site Twitter are also good ways to pass news of a job opening through the ranks of the employed.

4. Employer Branding

Even potential hires who are not actively seeking jobs have probably heard something about your
company's "employer brand." A company with a good employer brand is one known for hiring
the best people and retaining them with competitive pay, comfortable workplaces, and
opportunities for advancement. Faced with growing public awareness of the harmful effects of
cigarette smoking, Marlboro maker Philip Morris bolstered its employer brand by initiating
corporate social responsibility drives and padding up starting salaries, according to Claudia
Tattanelli, CEO of Swedish employer branding consultant Universum. As a result, the company
placed 29th on BusinessWeek's list of Best Places to Launch a Career in 2006, and 43rd in 2007.

5. Lighten Up

Don't know what tone to take with potential candidates? Try humor. At last year's Flash forward,
a trade event for flash programmers, audience members at certain panel discussions found in
their seats a recruiting pitch from irreverent ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky: a "Resignation
Toolkit," complete with a form letter of resignation to fill out and hand to their current employer
and contacts to set up an interview at the event itself.

6. Intrude

Often, the decision of a passive candidate to interview with a new company is an impulsive one,
according to Mike Temkin, vice-president for strategic planning and development at boutique
employment advertising agency Shaker. To play on the impulses of a potential hire, he says,
"You have to be intrusive. You have to drive the message to them." Shaker aimed to be intrusive
in this recent campaign for Connecticut casino Mohegan Sun, which included sidewalk chalkings
in high-traffic spots on college campuses.

7. Be Flexible

Once a passive candidate shows interest, the onus is on the recruiter to make the interviewing
and hiring process accommodating. "Unemployed people will go through any hell to get a
position. But employed people are busy," says John Sullivan, a recruiting consultant and
professor of management at San Francisco State University. Deloitte & Touche, for example,
holds interviews on nights and weekends.

8. Offer a Reward

After finding out firsthand how hard it is to get the best candidates into the interview room,
former recruiter Rob Ellis decided to add an incentive: cold hard cash. Google (GOOG), Walt
Disney (DIS), and Pepsico (PEP) are just a few of the companies that have begun to pay
qualified candidates to come in for an interview through NotchUp, a site co-founded by Ellis.
Still in beta testing, the site is a place for would-be hires—80% of whom identify themselves as
passive job seekers—to name the dollar amount a company would have to pay to interview them.
For an experienced worker making a current salary of $100,000, the site recommends an
interview price of around $500.

9. Use Your Big Brass:

Larger companies rarely involve their top executives in the hiring process, but when they do it
can help add to the allure of a job offer. Bill Crutchfield, chief executive of consumer electronics
retailer Crutchfield in Charlottesville, takes a personal stake in the hiring process when his hiring
managers tell him a quality candidate is on the fence: He calls them up or has them come into his
office. "I do this when we are aggressively recruiting a highly competitive applicant," says
Crutchfield. He says key prospects perk up when he gives them a call, "since applicants for
positions other the most senior ones rarely get an opportunity to speak with a CEO during the
recruiting process."

Avoiding "Sales Mode":

Once a passive candidate shows interest, the bonus is on the recruiter to make the interviewing
and hiring process accommodating. "Unemployed people will go through any hell to get a
position. But employed people are busy," says recruiting consultant Sullivan. Deloitte & Touche,
for example, holds interviews on nights and weekends to accommodate working professionals'
schedules.

Rolling out the red carpet for prospective hires can have an unintended result, warns consultant
Adler. "If you overdo it, you lessen the value of what you're offering," he says. "You have to
convince the candidate that it's worth him or her being a little inconvenienced."

To avoid "going into sales mode," as Adler puts it, some companies take a more laid-back, even
humorous, tone with the candidate. At last year's Flashforward, a trade event for flash
programmers, audience members at certain panel discussions found in their seats a recruiting
pitch from irreverent ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (MDCA). The pitch was in the guise
of a "Resignation Toolkit," complete with contacts to set up an interview at the event itself and a
form letter to fill out and hand to a current employer. The snarky opening pitch: "What's harder
than getting a job at CP+B? Quitting your old day job. Luckily for stellar Flash developers like
yourself, we've made it easier for you to do both."

Poaching Talent = Damaging your Competitor

A recent article (Poaching the Best Talent Worldwide) on the Electronic Recruiters Exchange
from Dr. John Sullivan leads to this entry. In the article Dr. Sullivan makes the point:
Poaching talent is the practice of proactively targeting and hiring top talent away from a
competitor or top firm, with the specific intention of:

- Securing skills or capabilities faster than if you were to attempt to develop talent internally
through training and development efforts
- Securing expanded capacity (i.e. more bodies) that will require fewer ramps up time
- Mitigating high-level talent losses due to attrition
- Damaging your competitors' ability to achieve their strategic objectives

Let me start off by saying that I am a firm believer in targeting your competitor's top talent for
your organization. It should be a staple of any organization's talent strategy. Having worked both
a 3rd party and corporate desk I have seen the repercussions of this strategy from both sides.
There are a large number of people in this business that believe you shouldn't go after a
competitor's talent with the express intent of damaging that organization.

Damage will be done. It doesn't matter if it is their top producer, their best pre-sales person, their
receptionist, or their marketing leader. Any time a top performer leaves an organization, damage
is inflicted upon it. We've all read and seen the stats on productivity of Top Performers vs
Average Performers. By saying that you didn't want to inflict damage on the competitor when
you recruit from that organization, to me, is nonsense.
Maybe it is the term "poaching" that gets a rise out of people. Call it what you will, but the end
result of stealing, raiding, recruiting, enticing, poaching, offering a better opportunity, soft
selling, hard selling, buying, whatever, your competition's talent is that you are damaging that
organization.

What companies need to do?

• Companies must have a clear picture as to how internal and external factors impact the way
business adapts to its environment. They then must map out process maps to discover the critical
points that act as pivots and significantly impact business. Business Process Re-engineering
approaches have created the tools and methodologies that are ideally suited for this task.

• Next step is to structure roles in a manner that empowers the pivotal ones to deliver value more
effectively. This is most effectively done by using job evaluation techniques and organization
design tools and principles.

• The third step is modification of present talent management systems, making it more open to
‘mobility of talent’ between functions.

Role of HR
Conventional HR Business Partner (HRBP) approaches may not be effective to deploy this
framework. HRBP models may not be up to this task primarily because it is identified too closely
with a ‘support’ function (HR) and is not really an organizational agenda. Additionally, all
management groups don’t invest in building talent and it is seen as the responsibility of HR
people. Lastly, there is very rarely an incentive for HR to understand the finer nuances of the
business they are in.

How it works?
To implement this talent model, companies have to build a talent advocacy group. While HRBP
groups support a business, the talent advocacy groups identify and support a set of employees as
the companies finest.

Wealth managers will be the role models for managing the talent of the company as its wealth.
Wealth Managers Advocacy Group must understand the needs of their clients and help them
identify the evolving criticality of roles, helping their ‘clients’ connect with those opportunities
within their companies.

The leadership team’s support and time will be a must for success of the group and monitoring
its efficiency.

A Primer on Poaching
Poaching talent is the practice of proactively targeting and hiring top talent away from a
competitor or top firm, with the specific intention of:

• Securing skills or capabilities faster than if you were to attempt to develop talent
internally through training and development efforts
• Securing expanded capacity (i.e. more bodies) that will require less ramp up time
• Mitigating high-level talent losses due to attrition
• Damaging your competitors’ ability to achieve their strategic objectives

The approach is not new and has been deployed around the world for ages, particularly in sports.
Take a World Cup soccer (football) team for example. Can you think of a single team that is
made up entirely of players from the country that team represents? The truth is that when
winning matters, the best teams seek out the best talent wherever it resides, be it their backyard
or a tiny undeveloped country nestled between two warring nations.

An Unstoppable Global Trend

The migration to a truly global economy is impacting every nation large and small in both
positive and negative ways. One of the most apparent impacts is that it has increased demand for
labor in nations that once supplied a surplus to developing nations, causing dramatic increases in
local wages, in turn making it more difficult to recruit talent abroad. In addition, the rampant
growth of offshore outsourcing has imbued developing nations with disposable income, making
possible their investment into higher value work. Combined, these two external forces are
complicating the pillage model that for so many years has filled hospitals with nurses and
hardware/software firms with engineers. It has also turned the tables, such that developing
nations must now devise ways to steal talent back from hyper-developed nations, i.e. poach!
Aggressive firms in such nations are following the leaders, they are:

• Putting work where the talent resides

• Subcontracting outsource contracts for low value activities to other developing nations
• Opening offices in locations that compete directly with their clients
• Offering very lucrative compensation packages for key players who return or are willing
to relocate to a developing nation

In short, the war for talent is no longer a local war, but rather a global one that will drive the
evolution and practice of talent poaching.

Three Dominant Poaching Strategies:

Poaching activities largely fall into one of three categories:

1. Direct sourcing. Firms use new data-mining techniques and tools, combined with age-
old recruiter phone techniques, to mine the organizational structure, employee identities,
and employee performance indicators of talent and product competitors. This competitive
intelligence is later used to determine whom specifically should be targeted for poaching.
All work is carried out internally.
 2. Third-party poaching. This strategy relies on using a vendor or series of vendors to
identify everything from which firms to target to what individuals to go after based on
your strategic objectives. (It is also by far the most common way organizations that find
poaching unethical actually practice it themselves. In their minds, poaching is perceived
as unethical only if you do it yourself.)
3. Attract them with “honey.” The third strategy is likely the one that few organizations
would associate with poaching, what we call the “attract them with honey” strategy. This
approach utilizes six different channels to drive candidates to your organization from
other specific organizations, much like product firms steer you to their products in
grocery stores.

All three strategies have the same impact in the long run, but offer firms a varied level of “ethical
exposure,” timeline, and cost. The three strategies outlined above are rank ordered in terms of
their time to productivity and cost, from least expensive with quickest impact to most expensive
with slowest impact. Because the ethical concerns over poaching are so great in the United
States, the remainder of this article will focus on the channels that power the “attract them with
honey” strategy.

The “Honey” Strategy: Six Primary Channels

The “honey” strategy is powered by a number of channels that drive candidates into your
recruiting process. While the list of actual channels is long, most of them fall into six categories:

1. Employment branding
2. Employee referrals
3. Event recruiting
4. Magnet hiring
5. Boomerang hiring
6. Internet

Each of these channels is outlined below.

1. The Employment Branding Channel

Many firms that have made an attempt to manage their employer brand do so with no particular
goals other than to develop either “Best Place to Work” or “Employer of Choice” status (note
that both of those terms are registered trademarks!). Such efforts are, for lack of a better word,
lame. Employment branding is not an art, but rather a science. It focuses on identifying which
employer attributes and characteristics are needed to recruit a highly defined target audience,
aligning organizational structure and management practices with those attributes where possible,
and communicating both directly and indirectly with the target audience to position the
organization as a leading firm providing those attributes. Employer branding relies on:

• External recognition as a leader in providing specific employer attributes, such as a value

on diversity, innovation, or talent development
 • Consistent messaging that continuously communicates who and what the firm is and what
value it provides to prospective employees
• A story inventory that provides specific examples of how management programs and
practices deliver value to employees
• A specific and differentiated theme (slogan) that competitors cannot easily mimic or
assert
• Recognition for functional excellence
• Lots of lots of press coverage in very specific publications that reach into the targeted
audience

2. The Employee Referral Channel

Just as most firms approach employment branding with no specific goal or outcome in mind,
they often develop employee referral programs that meander and produce mediocre results at
best. A targeted employee referral program, on the other hand, utilizes the employee population
to do all of the competitive intelligence mining that enables targeted poaching, with an added
benefit: It gets employees to utilize their personal networks to initiate the recruiting process. A
targeted poaching effort that utilizes the employee referral channel relies on:

• Active referrals: An approach that goes to employees with a specific set of

questions that prime them to remember who they know in specific roles,
organizations, etc.
• Top performer referral prioritization: An approach that acts on all
referrals coming in from proven top performers before acting on those from
other employees
• Reference referrals: An approach that contacts references of past hires
that proved to be top performers and asks who else they know
• Stakeholder referrals: An approach that leverages non employees who
have a vested interest in the success of the company to generate referrals,
such as consultants, suppliers, stock holders, etc.

3. The Events Channel

Nearly every organization that recruits will attend at least one event a year, be it a recruiting
event, an industry trade show, or a vendor exposition. But few select events to participate in
based on their probability of attracting employees from specific competitors. Utilizing events as
a poaching channel relies on:

• Identifying and participating in specific industry trade shows or association

events that have a proven attraction to employees of targeted competitors
• Hosting onsite seminars and certification courses that are attractive to the
competition
• Participating in non-industry/non-professional events that attract a target
audience, such as a beer and wine or arts festival.

4. The Magnet Hire Channel

The magnet hire channel is quite possibly the easiest one to understand. It simply relies on
polling top performers to identify the most respected or most visible professional who they
would be interested in working with, and then working to hire that person in hopes that they
would attract others to your organization.

5. The Boomerang Channel

At some point in time, nearly every employee decides to make a change and severs an
employment relationship. The boomerang channel is used in poaching by identifying former
employees that are currently employed by a competitor and developing specific strategies to lure
them back — which bring the added benefit of lots of competitive intelligence about
organizational structure and management practices, but not trade secrets or product information!

6. The Internet Channel

The final major channel that is used to power the “honey” approach to poaching is the Internet
channel. Unlike job posting and data mining, these approaches use the Internet to develop
resources that employees of competing organizations are drawn to. Examples include:

• Hosted information resource sites. These sites provide valuable

information that is useful to the target audience in their current role. For
instance, a hospital organization might launch an e-newsletter for nurses that
provide summaries of the latest breakthrough and techniques.
• Moderated professional forums. These tools enable professionals from a
multitude of organizations to share information and discuss issues in a safe
environment, free from advertisers and spammers.

1. Different Sources To Get Talented People

As a HR Professional (Chief Talent Acquisition Officer; Hiring Manager or Recruitment
Head), one should be aware of all the sources and resources to get best of the talents and
they should also be aware of as how to use those resources to the optimum level. You can
use either or all of the below mentioned tools to get BEST talents.
1) Existing and "Active" Candidates Data with Company.
2) Employee References.
3) Internal Advertisement (internal Job Posting).
4) Jobsites and Job Portals.
5) Campus Hiring.
6) Recruitment Consultancies.
7) External (Newspaper) Advertisement.

8) Social and Professional Networks & Local Communities.

9) Head Hunting (Also called as "Body Shopping").
10) Talent-Poaching.
Examples and case studies of Talent Poaching:

Silicon Valley Talent Poaching Highlights:

Silicon Valley: a big player at Google has left for Facebook. Or a Yahoo executive has been
seduced by Microsoft. Or some perky young startup has snatched a head developer from a
venerable software giant.

Silicon Valley's human resources arena, ripe with star engineers and executives, is like a day
time soap opera, full of unexpected surprises and shocking betrayals. Every time a transfer of
talent occurs, juicy questions immediately begin to pop up surrounding the jump. Were they
abused at the first company? Were they offered a huge salary? Who got screwed?

I'd like to take an overview of several high profile transfers of talent that have occurred in Silicon
Valley over the past decade. Each one is a soap opera in its own right and has in some way
affected the fertility of the Valley's technological breeding grounds. If I leave any big ones out,
be sure to contribute your own top Silicon Valley talent transfers.

Tim Armstrong, Google to AOL: This shocking transfer occurred in March, 2009, when AOL
abruptly fired two head executives and hired Google's sales boss, Tim Armstrong. Armstrong
had joined Google back in 2000, when the company's ad sales were minimal and it was still in
stiff competition with competitors like Yahoo and MSN. The acquisition of Armstrong signifies
a change in branding and corporate goals for AOL, as it continues to move away from its past as
a ISP towards a future in digital media and advertising.

Sheryl Sandberg, Google to Facebook: Sheryl Sandberg served as Google's VP of Global

Online Sales before being snatched away by a hungry startup called Facebook in March of 2008.
Sandberg's departure marked the end of Google's 'super growth spurt', which was capped with a
$747 share price a few months prior. It was rumored that Facebook's young CEO Mark
Zuckerburg first met Sandberg at a Christmas party, and was impressed. Soon after she left to
become Facebook's COO, which at the time was still a refreshingly new start up (and had a $15
billion dollar valuation).

Josh Elman, Facebook to Twitter: Although Facebook's former platform manager isn't as a
huge name, his new home at Twitter speaks volumes to the current 'Twitter-mania' that Silicon
Valley is going through. Facebook and Twitter are currently in a war (with Twitter having the
upper hand) for the 'real-time' web. Elman's savvy on how people connect and communicate in
real time is surely a gain for Twitter's growing empire.

Vic Gundotra, Microsoft to Google: Microsoft's 15 year platform evangelist, Vic Gundotra,
broke the breach and went to Google in June, 2006. This was at the height of Microsoft's Silicon
Valley envy, particularly the Redmond giant's jealousy of Google's growing search engine
dominance. Ever since, Microsoft has been hot on Google's tail - most recently launching it's
'Bing' search engine, which surprisingly has the beginnings to usurp Google's hot streak.
So what does the future hold for Silicon Valley? While some big players in talent acquisition
have emerged, there is always a hotbed of hungry start ups that have proved time and again that
they compete with the big boys. Although many of these start ups don't yet have the hiring
resources and clout of the Googles and Facebooks, they are fast moving, ambitious, and have
products that are set to change the world. Armed with the right tools, such as cost effective
Applicant Tracking software, many of these small companies may soon make an apperance on
the soap opera that is, Silicon Valley Hiring.

1. News International’s Group HR Director set to join Vodafone:

In the New Year, Daniel Cloke will be joining Vodafone after spending after spending seven
years with Robert Murdoch’s News International. In his role of Group HR Director, Cloke led a
number of HR and cultural change programmes at the UK-based newspaper publisher.

Prior to this, Cloke held the position of Group HR Director at MyTravel Group and has also
worked in other senior HR roles with Telewest Telecommunications and Allied Domecq. He
joins Vodafone on 4 January 2011, and will report to the firm’s CEO Guy Lawrence.

He replaces Matthew Brearley, who is ending a seven-year tenure with Vodafone at the end of
this year. During the past five years Brearley held the position of HR and Property Director, and
has decided to leave the firm to pursue his charity interest. He intends to return to corporate life
later next year.

2. McDonald's Talent Case Study

Enhancing the Talent Management System to Support McDonald's Global Growth

McDonald’s Corporation Enhancing the Talent Management System to Support McDonald’s

Global Growth Since 2001 McDonald’s has introduced a series of significant changes to its HR
systems to strengthen the organization’s capability to develop the quantity and quality of
leadership talent needed to support its continued global growth and vitality.
This case study focuses on describing five separate initiatives that have been introduced in the
past five years to strengthen the areas of Performance Development, Succession Planning, and
Leadership Development.
For each initiative it describes how and why the changes were introduced, how they have been
refined over time, and the positive impacts they have had within the business. Below is a list of
the initiatives along with what is included with each:
• Initiative 1: Performance Development System Redesign • McDonald’s Process •
Upgrades to the process • “Performance Drivers” • New System Roll-out vs. Local
Emphasis • Results of Implementation • Ratings of Potential • Lessons Learned
• Initiative #2: Global Succession Planning and Development Process • McDonald’s design
of the Global Talent Review Process • Talent Review Process Impact • Metrics for
 Assessing Quantitative Impacts • Next Steps for Talent Review • Additional Positive
Impacts.
• Initiative #3: Design and Implementation of the LAMP Program • Specific Design
considerations • Participation • Group Sessions • Individual Learning Opportunities •
Commitment and Expectations • LAMP Program Evaluation and Impact o Qualitative
Feedback o Quantitative Impact o Evolution of the LAMP Program o Continued
Evidence of Success.
• Initiative #4: McDonald’s Leadership Development Institute • Description of the institute
and offerings.
• Initiative #5: The Global Leadership Development Program • Overview This Case Study
Includes: Models, Exhibits, Examples, Business and Global Workforce Stratgies,
Global/Local Balance Explanations, “Plan to Win”, Customer and Employee focus, and
Key initiatives and enhancements

Report: Apple, Google agreed not to poach each other's workers

by Jennifer Guevin Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Apple and Google are said to have had an unofficial agreement not to poach each other's
employees--or at least they did while Google CEO Eric Schmidt served on Apple's board,
according to TechCrunch.

Unnamed sources told TechCrunch that no formal, written agreement exists, and that employees
of one company were welcome to apply for jobs at the other, but that the two companies said
they would not actively pursue hiring away each other's workers.

It is unclear whether any such agreement would still be in effect now that Eric Schmidt has
stepped down from Apple's board of directors.

Such an agreement could stifle competition among companies that rely heavily on top-notch
engineering talent. The Washington Post reported in June that the Justice Department had
launched an industry wide investigation into whether companies, including Apple and Google,
had violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruitment and hiring of each other's workers.

Tech companies have waged fierce battles to keep top talent in their ranks. In one closely
watched case, Microsoft sued Google in 2005 after it hired Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft.
The two parties eventually settled out of court. In May, IBM filed a lawsuit in federal court to
prevent its former head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, from joining Dell, saying it
would be a violation of his contract. And last year, the company sued Mark Paper master to keep
him from joining Apple. IBM and Paper master settled a few months later, and Paper master
eventually did start working at Apple.

Summary:
Human Resource Management or Human Resources Development encompasses Human resource
procurement, development, talent management, compensation, mobility, retention, performance
appraisal & employee relations.
Shortage of critical skills has become a global phenomenon = due to ageing population and the
baby boom children reaching retirement ages. Demographic change is being witnessed cutting
across nations and regions. Organizations in countries like India are also witnessing a change
process in systems, management culture, philosophies and management practices. It is primarily
due to economic compulsions and global alignment of developing nations.

An important emerging HR issue is to build an organization in line with capability profile. It

emphasizes that competencies are attributes, professional skills, or a combination of skills,
knowledge & behavior. An integrated system of values, vision, mission statements, goals/
objectives, action planning, and support systems are required to obtain synergy of thought and
action. Talent Management requires the integrated inputs for management.

While competency is the scene and measurable on-the-job performance, behavior is a function of
consequences. Competence matters because past performances are the best source for prediction
of future performance. Good current performance builds from past performance and the more
recent the effective behavior, the more appropriate is the fit for the job. Organizations need to
follow an integrated approach for talent management by looking at skills, knowledge and
behavior i.e. the capability profile. These behaviors can be judged during selection and
recruitment for employee development, performance management, training, succession planning
and career development as part of the process of talent selection and talent retention strategy.

Talent management refers to the process of developing and integrating new workers, developing
and retaining current workers, and attracting highly skilled workers to work for your company.
The major aspects of talent management practiced within an organization must consistently
include:
• performance management
• leadership development
• workforce planning/identifying talent gaps
• recruiting
It is seen that 'Talent Management' is receiving due attention of management in organizations
and there is a need felt to improve inputs from an integrated approach of assessment of
professionals at middle and senior levels of management to select right talent, retain them and to
reduce attrition. 'The Talent War' is looming over the organizations.

Conclusion:

The battle lines in the war for talent are expanding, and those with the most to lose need to
understand that aggressive tools and approaches will be used by the competition. There is no
place for complacency on the battlefield, which causes unnecessary death. Developing firms in
developing countries are desperate for talent, and they have no reservations about poaching your
best people. The evolution of poaching has begun, and there is no turning back. While the honey
strategy will work in the short term, it is expensive and takes time. Eventually recruiters will
have to learn to accept the role they play in their organizations’ future and get past what concerns
they may have with direct poaching.
The current talent management systems focus only on talent identification, but not the best
utilization it can provide. Companies will need to ensure that the limited talent is reserved for its
most critical roles. Channelizing its most gifted people into its most important roles will become
a source of competitive advantage in a fast changing world.

References:

1) http://robbmyers.wordpress.com/2006/06/16/poaching-talent-damaging-your-competitor/
2) http://ezinearticles.com/?Silicon-Valley-Talent-Poaching-Highlights&id=3297360
3) http://topjoboptions.com/blog/?tag=talent-poaching
4) http://www.channelbusiness.in/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=78
5) http://www.resumes-india.com/news/233/Pune-IT-cos-ink-peace-pact-to-end-talent-
poaching-20233.html
6) http://www.skylinecollege.com/blog/talent-management/talent-management-retention-
strategies
7) http://www.thegrapevinemagazine.com/?newsid=3423
8) http://www.ere.net/2005/11/21/poaching-the-best-talent-worldwide/
9) http://peoplematters.in/articles/focus-areas-13/talent-advocacy
10) https://bestpracticeinstitute.org/members/articles/mctalent.html
11) http://internationalhr.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/how-top-companies-manage-talent-
development/
12) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10305957-37.html
13) http://www.interlude.hk/front/music-notes/classic-case-of-poaching-talent/