You might be surprised to learn that the ideal applicant for that difficult-to-fill position is already employed by your company.
Many employees in businesses like yours are skilled and eager to take on new challenges. They are simply awaiting for the ideal moment to arise.
Although hiring from inside is a terrific method to save time and money, internal recruitment is frequently underestimated. Internal recruiting is crucial because it demonstrates to your staff how much you value them and how actively interested you are in their professional development.
If you don’t take advantage of internal recruitment opportunities, you risk letting capable individuals pass you by as you battle to find and onboard new hires.
Today we will take a look at internal recruiting and get a better understanding of when this may be the right option for your company and how to successfully recruit internally.
What Is Internal Recruitment?
Internal recruiting is the process of using an employee who is currently part of your workforce to fill a new position or to backfill a vacancy.
Some of the main types of internal recruitment include:
- Promotions
- Transfers
- Employee referrals
- Moving temporary employees to full-time positions
Your job will become lot easier and you’ll spend less time filling vacancies if you set up a hiring strategy for internal candidates.
External recruitment refers to the hiring of individuals from outside organizations to fill your open positions. Sometimes this entails “headhunting,” in which recruiters contact potential candidates directly. In other situations, it entails advertising a job description and screening applicants until you find the ideal match.
How Does Internal Recruitment Work?
Although it may appear challenging, internal recruitment is quite simple. It all boils down to knowing your own talent and comprehending the long-term goals of your staff.
There are a few fundamental ideas that hold true regardless of an organization’s unique set of circumstances. In order to get the most out of your internal recruitment efforts, follow this step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Determine if You Will Recruit Internally
Even though it might seem obvious, it’s crucial to specify the qualifications you’ll be looking for in candidates for your open position and decide whether or not hiring internally for the position will be advantageous for your business.
Step 2: Post Your Job Internally
In order to set clear expectations in your internal job post on who in your organization will be allowed to apply, clearly state what experience, talents, and contributions will be required to thrive in this capacity. Once that is done, submit your job post to the company’s internal job board.
Step 3: Conduct a Skill and Interest Audit
This is a fun process when you get to work with your frontline managers and senior executives to comb through your present workforce for individuals who meet the requirements and show interest in your internal job advertising.
Give your leadership teams part of the preparation work. They will frequently have a better sense of which team members are prepared for a new function because they are more in touch with the workforce.
Step 4: Communicate the Job Opening Internally
Don’t only publish your job internally. Do more. Work together with the hiring manager and the rest of your HR team to create a strategy for distributing information about the job opportunity and the application requirements.
Depending on your environment, you might print up a notification to post throughout the office’s busiest spots. Email communication is a standard practice in the workplace nowadays. In addition to posting a position, send out an email. You can collaborate with frontline managers to have them tell their teams the opening in person. Your internal communications staff might also be able to use official internal communication channels to distribute a message to the entire organization.
Step 5: Communicate Application Eligibility Requirements
For internal candidates, many businesses have eligibility requirements in place. Certain tenure requirements, good job status requirements, or geographic location are some rules.
Whatever your precise qualifying requirements are, be sure to disclose them as early and clearly as possible to avoid unhappy employees who feel that they should have been taken into consideration but weren’t.
Step 6: Respond to Every Internal Candidate
In most cases, more people will apply for an open post than will actually be hired, and some unqualified people will apply. You must reply to each applicant if you want to foster a favorable candidate experience and maintain employee engagement.
If you choose not to consider a candidate, you should have a strategy in place for someone from HR or from their leadership vertical to meet with them and have a productive conversation about why they were not selected and what they can do to improve their qualifications in the future.
Step 7: Update Every Internal Candidate
Aside from filling this position, you’re probably also being tugged in a dozen other directions as recruiting typically occurs at dizzying speeds. Don’t skip this step, even if it will feel extremely vital to.
In the long term, giving applicants regular updates will keep them interested in their existing jobs and increase their output. It can be hard to hold off on responding to a job. Building a solid business culture depends on taking the time and going above and above to inform everyone who applied to your internal job.
Step 8: Provide Feedback to Every Internal Candidate
You’ll eventually come across the ideal candidate and extend the job offer. You must now inform everyone else that they did not get the job.
This phase is also frequently omitted by hiring teams. They lose the trust of their staff and harm the culture of their business when they skip this step.
It is possible to “deliver cold water warmly,” as the adage goes, despite the fact that these will be painful conversations. Even though you’ll be breaking terrible news in these meetings, you can do so in a way that encourages and drives the people who weren’t selected for the position to further their self-investment.
Advantages of Internal Recruitment
- You Already Know Internal Candidates
Internal hiring involves less risk. Despite the fact that you may have never seen the given employee perform that particular task before, you have seen the employee at work for your company. You can feel confidence in your hiring decisions since you have direct knowledge of their performance, how they fit into the business culture, how they handle disagreements and challenges, and other factors.
The risk associated with hiring external applicants is much higher. Even if they come highly recommended from trustworthy sources, there is still a possibility that they won’t live up to expectations, stick around, or suit the company’s culture, and that might be expensive. A new employee’s compensation may cost up to 2-3 times as much to hire, according to some experts. Many businesses experience higher turnover rates as a result of the frequent and costly issue of mishiring.
This issue is difficult to resolve since it’s difficult to gauge a person’s performance without actually putting them to work. Even the finest interview questions or the most exhaustive reference checks can fall short. Giving someone a job and putting them on the payroll is frequently the only method to really measure how well they function as an employee. And if they fall short of your expectations, you’ve made a mistake in hiring them.
Internal Recruitment Reduces Hiring Costs
One of the main advantages of hiring internally is that you not only save much of the expense and risk of a poor employee, but you also save money on other expenditures associated with the onboarding procedures.
Internal hiring saves money since it eliminates the need to place advertising on job boards and pay for them, search resume databases for candidates, or pay for background checks on internal recruits. Your internal hires should, presumably, already have a background check if they required one.
By employing internal recruiting for your next role, you can cut hiring costs and the chance that you’ll lose the person because they don’t match your company’s culture.
- Onboarding Internal Candidates Is Much Easier
Candidates from within the organization have already made up their minds regarding whether or not they will enjoy working there. When 17% of new recruits quit after the first month, that’s a major concern. They are likely willing to devote more career time to your company if they are looking for an internal role. If not, they would be searching for employment elsewhere.
As a result, there’s a lower chance that you’ll need to fire them shortly after you’ve hired them because their expectations weren’t met by the position, the group, or the company.
Additionally, since the candidate is already familiar with some or all of the systems they will be using in their new role, training and onboarding will take less time. (Note: We indicated there would be less time for onboarding, not none at all. Onboarding new employees from within is still crucial.)
- Internal Recruitment Saves Time
Searching extensively is necessary when hiring externally. It might be laborious and time-consuming to insert lines into the water using various pathways. Just to find a few potential candidates, you might need to sift through dozens or even hundreds of applications. Or even worse, you might not draw any applications and never locate the ideal applicant. But internal hiring is frequently much simpler.
If you choose, you can quickly announce the open position to the entire firm, letting prospective staff members know where to send their applications and resumes. Your options are typically far better, and the applications come in with much less effort, even though you might still see some unqualified people and have to perform some sorting.
- Internal Recruitment Boosts Company Loyalty and Engagement
Internal hiring is critical for engagement and morale, most importantly.
Your staff members seek chances for development, education, and advancement. They will be seeking for methods to advance as long as they continue to work for your company—to boost their standing, improve their income, and broaden the scope of their present skills and duties. One strategy for offering such possibilities is to hire from within your workforce.
Bottom Line
SW HR Consulting has been helping companies to build their teams and values for over 10 years. Contact us to find out more about our unique hr outsourcing services and see how our expertise can benefit you.
