Poaching is when one illegally hunts wildlife. People are not animals, and hiring them is not harming them. It is a terrible term to apply to human beings.
Do we also need to retire ‘head hunting’, because it brings to mind cartoonishly outdated notions of savagery?
Reject modernity, embrace tradition.
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poach (verb) poached; poaching; poaches
Intransitive verb
1. To encroach upon, especially for the purpose of taking something.
2. To trespass for the purpose of stealing game; also, to take game or fish illegally.
Transitive verb
1. To trespass on.
2. a. To take (game or fish) by illegal methods.
b. To appropriate (something) as one's own.
c. To attract (someone, such as an employee or customer) away from a competitor.Do you object if someone says, "I adopted a new strategy"? After all, children are adopted, and one could say that using this phrase trivializes a deeply important human relationship.
Do you object if someone says, "She's a fan of my work"? After all, a fan is a machine that blows air. It could be said that referring to a person as a fan reduces them to an appliance whose purpose is to serve someone else.
Do you object if someone says, "I have a date tonight"? After all, a date is a fruit. Someone could say that calling a romantic partner a "date" is to objectify them and reduce them to something consumed for pleasure.
No one is "taking a term" and "trying to apply" it to anything. The word has multiple meanings/uses, full stop.
What you are objecting to is one of its meanings (attracting employees from a competitor), because you don't like the negative connotation of another of its meanings (stealing game). And that's because you believe that the latter meaning's negative connotation will make the former also feel more negative. But I submit that that's just in your head, and the heads of a few others, and the vast majority of people are able to keep two definitions quite separate.