Co-petition vs. Competition – A Key Building Block to Winning the Talent Wars

Everyone wants to win the talent wars but no one is thinking smart. Companies are competing hard against each other for candidates, by raising salaries, offering signing bonuses and by sinking more and more money into recruiting events and fairs. When will the insanity stop!

There is a better way and that way is called co-petition. Co-petition is all about leveraging your customers, suppliers and anyone who is not your competitor (what I call the US Network) in a direct market to win talent market share. Your competitors I will call the THEM Network. Here’s how you can leverage this tactic.

1. To Recruit

All companies spend heavily on recruitment but only hire a small percentage of the candidates, due either to poor fit, current unavailability and or their inability to convince the candidate that their opportunity is the best fit for them. But imagine if instead of spending heavily on recruiting events and strategies you could leverage from the US network immediately. Now there is just in time recruiting.

2. To Retain

Let’s face it, losing good employees is a fact of life, it’s going to happen no matter what brilliant strategies you put in place. So why not try to keep all this good talent away from competitors by having them take opportunities within the US network. Not only does this make good business sense i.e.: ensuring top talent does not work with your key competitors but it’s also a great opportunity to increase your organizations sales by having former employees who are knowledgeable about your company and products now sitting with current or potential customers and suppliers.

3. To Hurt your Competition

Well someone has to lose and I would rather it’s someone other than my clients. Developing the US network hurts the competition by providing you with quicker access to talent than they can recruit it. It also eliminates potential talent sources that were once more easily available to them. By reducing your costs related to recruiting, retention and retraining your company can compete more effectively. And more importantly by cementing stronger business relationships with your suppliers and clients your competitors are less appealing to them.

It’s all about increasing the odds of winning. And co-petition goes a long way in re-defining how to win the talent wars. This is just an early primer and co-petition should form a large building block for your overall business and talent strategy. I look forward to sharing more of my thinking with you in my next blog.


Want to know more about how to put this in place for your company, send me an email at fguay@rogers.com



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