In a market at full employment, the uncomfortable arithmetic is that almost everyone worth hiring is already hired - frequently by your competitor. Recruiting them is not a dark art; it is what a functioning labour market looks like from the employer side. But there is a clean way and a messy way, and the difference decides whether you gain a great hire or a legal letter and a reputation.
- At full employment, hiring means hiring the employed - and the best of them work for competitors. That is normal market behaviour, not misconduct.
- Recruiting individuals openly is generally lawful; using their confidential knowledge, inducing contract breaches or orchestrating raids is where trouble lives.
- Switchers move for concrete differences: a published number, a better rota, a shorter commute, visible respect.
- Expect the counteroffer, and pre-empt it in the offer conversation rather than reacting to it after resignation.
What is actually fair game?
Advertising where competitor staff will see it, approaching individuals respectfully, offering better terms, interviewing them discreetly - all ordinary competition. Employees own their skills, their experience and their general know-how, and those move with them lawfully. What does not move: customer lists, supplier pricing, recipes and processes marked confidential, and anything copied on the way out. The rule of thumb that keeps you safe: hire the person for what they can do, never for what they can bring. If an interview drifts into a competitor's numbers, steer it back - a candidate eager to leak their current employer's secrets is auditioning to leak yours.
Why switchers actually move
- A visible number. Employed candidates rarely fill in long applications, but they do read a feed ad with real pay on it. Publishing the range is the single strongest switcher magnet - the case made in salary transparency.
- Schedule and commute. Same pay, better rota, fifteen minutes closer to home wins quietly and often.
- Escape velocity. Many switchers are leaving a manager, not a company. Signalling decent management - named supervisor in the ad, structured first week - lands harder than employers expect.
- Being seen. A senior barista stuck behind an owner's nephew moves for the first employer who names a path up, per hiring shift leaders.
Passive switchers do not visit job boards - they scroll. Feed campaigns with a two-minute application are structurally the right instrument for them, which is why social-first hiring, as covered in reaching passive candidates, overlaps so heavily with competitor hiring.
Etiquette that protects you
Approach individuals, not shift groups; one-at-a-time hiring reads as recruitment, synchronized departures read as a raid. Respect notice periods fully - the market is small, you will meet that competitor again, and a candidate you helped breach a contract has learned breach works. Never disparage their employer in the process; confident offers do not need it. And when a competitor hires from you, take the call gracefully - the door you keep open is the one former staff walk back through, often more skilled, as described in rehiring past applicants.
The counteroffer endgame
Assume the current employer will counter on resignation day - in a shortage, replacing a trained person costs more than a raise. Pre-empt it in the offer conversation: name the pattern out loud, ask what a counter would need to change to keep them, and note gently that the conditions prompting the move rarely change with the number. Then make starting easy and fast, because long notice-to-start gaps are where counteroffers win. The full mechanics are in the offer stage guide.
The takeaway
Hiring from competitors is legitimate, inevitable in a tight market, and safest when done in the open: public ads with real numbers, individual approaches, clean handling of confidential matter, honoured notice periods and pre-empted counteroffers. Do it that way and it is simply called hiring.
Recruiting switchers?
Qwiza puts your concrete advantages - pay, rota, location - in front of employed candidates in the feed, where they quietly browse. Ranked, screened, 48-hour pilot target.
See how Qwiza worksFrequently asked questions
Is it legal to hire staff from a competitor?
As a rule, yes - employees are free to change jobs, and offering someone better terms is competition working as intended. The lines you must not cross: inducing someone to breach a valid notice period or enforceable restrictive covenant, taking or using the competitor's confidential information through the hire, and in some jurisdictions coordinated mass raids designed to damage rather than to hire. Recruit the person, not their employer's secrets, and you are on solid ground almost everywhere.
Do non-compete clauses stop me hiring a frontline worker?
Rarely. For ordinary frontline roles, non-competes are unenforceable, void or heavily restricted in most European jurisdictions - many require paid compensation during the restriction, which employers of waiters and warehouse staff almost never set up. Confidentiality obligations are a different matter and do bind. When a candidate mentions a clause, read it before assuming it bites: most are boilerplate that would not survive contact with a court.
How do I stop competitors doing the same to me?
Not with contracts - with reasons to stay. Counter-recruiting defence is retention: pay reviewed against the current market rather than last year's, rotas people can live with, supervisors people do not flee, and growth paths made visible. Every defence you build also becomes recruiting copy, which is the pleasant symmetry of tight markets.
