What are the Advantages of Internal Recruitment?
If you own or run a small or large business, the advantages of internal recruitment are really important to comprehend. Is it not so that successful recruitment represents the lifeblood of your company?
Regardless of the current performance of your organization, what it really comes down to is the fact that without good people to run your business it will fail.
First off, what exactly is external recruitment?
External recruitment is when you source candidates that are not currently working for your organization. You may use online job boards for this purpose or you might prefer to utilize the services of a recruitment agency.
What about internal recruitment?
Internal or in-house recruitment is when you search within your own company for a suitable employee to fill the vacant position.
In this article, we consider the advantages of internal recruitment and the potential downsides when you have to hire employees externally.
Internal Recruitment – the Advantages
1. Internal Candidates are Tried and Tested
All job candidates come with some risks but if you opt to hire external candidates the risk is significantly higher than hiring internally.
Even external candidates that come with high praise from previous employers might not fit in with the culture of your workplace. They may simply be using the new job with your company as a quick stepping stone to something else that they’d prefer to do.
Hiring and training new employees can be a very expensive undertaking and this undermines profitability. That’s why it’s important to implement employee retention efforts as this should help to curtail costs that are known about as well as those that are not previously considered that come with new employees.
Regardless that the questions asked during the interview were excellent and reference checks were more than thorough, it doesn’t always lead to ideal hiring choices being made. After all, it’s difficult to know how someone will actually perform until they are doing the job.
You can avoid the same level of risk by hiring internally. The employee/s you decide to hire may never have worked on the same specific tasks, but you’re still familiar with overall work ethic and much more.
You know how an internal hire performs, you know that they already fit in well with your company’s culture, you know they can deal with problem issues.
2. You Get to Hold Onto Your Best People
When you opt to promote in-house it doesn’t merely send a very positive signal to the ‘new’ employee. It also sends a very positive message to everyone that works for you. Namely, it spells out that your company offers its current employees opportunities to advance. It says to them that for the time they put in at work, that time can be well spent in developing a career as opposed to it merely being a job.
If your best employees are able to witness a clear pathway to progression, you’re much more likely to retain those employees.
3. Cost
Hiring internally is the best way to reduce risk and cost of hiring a bad fit for the job, but you also avoid many other costs that are incurred throughout the onboarding phase.
Internally hiring reduces cost in that there’s no need to pay for advertising, you don’t need to utilize resume databases, and you don’t have to pay for background checks.
The risk of losing a new hire and the costs involved in sourcing your employee are greatly diminished when you hire internally.
In fact, research has shown that hiring externally can cost 1.7 times more than if you were to hire internally.
3. Familiarity with the Company
Candidates that come from an internal source are already familiar with the company – they’ve presumably made up their mind that they wish to stick around, and even more so if being hired for a higher-paid position.
Given that the employee has applied for this particular internal position, typically, it’s a sign that they are happy at your company and feel comfortable taking on the additional responsibilities that the job will require. If not, they would most likely apply for a job elsewhere.
Further, because the internal candidate is already at least reasonably familiar with some or all the systems in place the onboarding and training costs will be far less than otherwise. Obviously, some onboarding and training will still be required.
The Benefits of Internal Recruitment
4. Easier to Find
There’s a whole lot of searching required for external recruitment. It might involve sifting through tens or even hundreds of job applications. Worse still, your recruitment advertising may fail to attract anyone remotely suitable.
It’s generally far easier to succeed with in-house recruitment if you own or manage a large company.
The position can be broadcast to the entire company within a matter of minutes. And even though there may be some candidates that are not really well suited, the options available when hiring internally are often much improved in comparison.
5. Encourages Company Loyalty and Boosts Engagement
In-house recruiting is vital in terms of employee morale and engagement.
There’s little doubt that your employees will want opportunities to grow, to learn, and to progress within the company. During their time with your organization, many employees will want to find ways to move up the ranks because they want more responsibility, increased pay, improved status. When you hire in-house it’s a great way to provide your employees with these forms of opportunity.
6. Reduced Time Investment
Hiring new employees generally involves a lot of time. For external recruitment, there will be hours involved in creating and posting the ads, then sorting through all the resumes and cover letters to find those that look to be a better fit.
Then, there are the interviews, all the evaluating, the communication involved in the ‘congratulations, we want you!’ or ‘we don’t want you, sorry’ process.
There’s so much time and effort involved in hiring an employee that may or may not work out.
It’s much easier and much quicker to find an internal candidate that’s suitable for the position. Time involved in contacting and assessing is much more efficient since you can easily get in touch, ask for feedback from managers, and have a look at employee performance records.
If you already have familiarity with the employee, a full interview may not be necessary. Additionally, you’re already familiar with the employee’s cultural fit.
Replacing Your Internal Employee After an In-House Hire
Yes, you still have to replace the internal employee you’ve re-hired in a different position. Frequently, this will be for a more junior position and that makes it not only easier to recruit for but also easier to train for.
Plus, albeit a slight downside to hiring internally, there’s also the benefit that it can improve overall employee morale as well as loyalty, on the provision that they realize there are opportunities for career growth within the company they work for.
From the perspective of the employer, it’s a definite asset to have employees that wish to grow within your company since it will help in reducing turnover – an expense that every company could do without if it were possible.
How to Communicate an Internal Job Posting
Now that you’ve opted to reap the benefits of internal recruitment, how do you go about making your employees aware of the vacant job?
Here are a few ideas:
Place a bulletin board inside the break room and post details of any vacant jobs as they arise.
Use your company website to list available in-house jobs. This will also help to notify any employees that work from home.
Use email to circulate vacancies. An obvious choice and one which can be used in tandem with the two options above.