IndiGo, Spice fight over poaching

New Delhi: The poaching war among domestic air carriers is not over yet. IndiGo is upset with its biggest rival SpiceJet for recruiting many of its employees. In an informal message to the company, IndiGo has asked SpiceJet not hire its employees.
SpiceJet has hired about three-four employees at the level of general managers, project heads, who were working with the IndiGo. “They have asked us not to target their employees, which is not at all the case with us. We had not approached these people on our own,” a senior SpiceJet official.
The carrier has recently said that it was looking for various senior level executives including the chief financial officer, heads of human resource, marketing departments. In addition, the company is also looking at hiring about 60 pilots and an equivalent number of employees for various levels in the next fiscal.
“It’s relatively easier to hire people in today’s scenario. We have got very good resumes for our high-level posts. We will soon take a final call,” Sanjay Aggarwal, the CEO of SpiceJet had said.
The SpiceJet official said that the message from the IndiGo came as a surprise as the company has hired so many senior officials of the SpiceJet in the past. “They had poached more than a dozen of our employees in the past including our former CEO Siddhanta Sharma, Sanjay Kumar (vice-president, sales and marketing). They had offered almost a 100 per cent hike to our employees,” said the official. He said the company has hired new employees at the normal hike of about 30 per cent.
Poaching, according to the recruitment industry experts, makes good sense in terms of business as the candidate doesn’t require training.
12/03/09 Parul Chhaparia/mydigitalfc.com