can I poach an employee from my mentor?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I am going to be leaving my company soon and starting my own business, and will need to hire support staff. One of the employees at my current company (Taylor) has told me she is looking for a new job. I find Taylor to be an excellent employee and I would be […]

Apr 7, 2025 - 18:15

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I am going to be leaving my company soon and starting my own business, and will need to hire support staff. One of the employees at my current company (Taylor) has told me she is looking for a new job. I find Taylor to be an excellent employee and I would be happy to have her working for me. I believe that she enjoys working with me as well.
The catch is that Taylor primarily works with Leslie, one of my colleagues here, and has done so for several years. Leslie has been a mentor to me since I started working in this city. She is well liked and well connected in our field, while I’m pretty new to it.
I do not plan on asking Taylor to come work for me. However, this would not prevent her from submitting a resume if I post a job ad, particularly if she knows that I will be hiring.
I am worried that if Taylor left her job to come work for me, Leslie would see this as employee poaching and would perceive this as betrayal of a mentor, even if I didn’t actively solicit Taylor to work for me. It would impact Leslie’s work because she would need to hire a new support staffer and train them to her specifications, which takes time and effort.
Primarily I want to preserve my good relationship with Leslie, but I also don’t want to become known in my relatively small professional circle as the one who left Leslie in the lurch by poaching her support staff.
I also recognize that Taylor is not an indentured servant to Leslie and does have the choice of leaving whenever she wants. If she were to submit a resume, I’m not sure that “you work for Leslie so I can’t hire you” is a good enough reason to strike her off of my list, particularly when she has worked for me before and we have a good relationship.
What are your thoughts? Could I hire Taylor if she submitted a resume to work for me, or is the risk of torpedoing a good personal relationship and a professional reputation too high?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.