Old habits die hard! Multinational consultancies poaching senior employees from rivals

Thanks to the rapid growing economy, the growth of multinational consultancies has touched double digits in India, to maximize which, they have returned to their old ways of poaching senior executives, partners and their teams from rivals by offering stronger paychecks and other perks.

Talking of the recent past, at least 20 partners from such consultancies, along with their teams of about 150 professionals, have either joined rival companies or are about to, all in a matter of three months.

Although the big four, viz. EY, PwC, Deloitte and KPMG, are leading this poaching round, several other firms like BDO, Grant Thornton and Baker Tilly too are signing joining letters from new partners and accepting resignations from the existing ones.

As per ET sources, a partner with KPMG is set to join PwC, to head indirect tax there. "Everyone who is in the indirect tax practice in KPMG has got an offer to join competition. Though, not all team members would choose to jump the boat. Some of them may settle with a renegotiation of their salary and role in their current organisation," said the source.

There are cases when one person (and his team) is being offered posts from two or three firms, who are fighting over one team.

The reason, they say, is the lack of trained people in the industry, because of which they have to rely on poaching. However, to stop their partners from leaving, these companies are also looking at restructuring the contracts so that leaving can be made tougher.

Image source