The Power of Internal Recruitment

What is Internal Recruitment?

Internal recruitment fills job openings and hires employees from different departments and teams. Finding internal candidates has many advantages like employees already having an insider view of the company and promoting employee loyalty and growth.

Although often overlooked as an aspect of the hiring process, internal recruitment brings plenty of benefits, such as saving time and money. More importantly, internal recruiting shows your employees that you genuinely value them and your desire to help them advance in their careers. Not choosing internal recruitment means failing to capitalise on benefits, which can sometimes even result in hard-working, skilled people not getting the chance to take your company to a new level. However, at the same time, you need help onboarding and attracting new hires.

Why is it Important?

Internal recruitment is hugely impactful, significantly when your company is growing. Companies need to hire from within; this should be a best practice for developing talent and lowering turnover rates. Internal recruiting cultivates talent and trains people to move up in the organisation. It also contributes to making impactful strategies for cultivating talent suited for leadership roles.

People within the organisation know and fit in with the company culture, which means they can seamlessly move into these roles with less downtime.

The Goal of Internal Recruitment

Internal recruiting may seem complicated, but it is a simple process. It comes down to genuinely knowing your in-house talent and understanding your team members’ aspirations. While there are circumstances that may vary from department to team, there are a few principles that lead to achieving the goals of internal recruiting, such as:

Outline new policies for posting job positions
Create internal recruitment policies
Let employees know about the open positions
Provide detailed information about the job opening
Promote employees transparently and fairly

These practices can ultimately lead to achieving the one main goal of internal recruiting – choosing from your talent pool of exceptional internal candidates that will best fit your open role.

Advantages of Internal Recruitment

There are multiple benefits to hiring internal people within your organisation. Of them include:

Reduced time to hire
Low cost per hire
Less time spent on onboarding
Promoting employee morale
Reduced employee turnover
Rewarding existing staff members
Increasing retention rates
Ensuring seamless cultural fit

Strategies for a Successful Internal Recruitment Process

Different companies will utilise various strategies for an internal recruitment process, so there isn’t a universal template that will fit every organisation. However, there are some steps that can help most companies create an internal recruitment strategy for an effective recruitment process:

Evaluate whether this is the right approach for your company – Despite the many benefits it offers, internal recruiting is not always the best option since there are cases when external candidates bring more value, skills, ideas and energy.
Establish an efficient process and advertising opportunities – In bigger companies, tools like ATS can allow for a seamless internal hiring process as they help vacancies be easily advertised to all employees on an intranet platform. For companies that don’t have an ATS system in place, other options include email, social media posts, noticeboards and notifications with clear instructions on how to apply.
Make it easy for employees to apply – Existing employees already understand the organisation, the application process doesn’t have to be as detailed as it would be for an external process. The internal candidates can apply via a simplified internal application form, saving time and preventing the frustrations of sharing the same information all over again.
Build a template for needed skills – Develop a specific document that can be tweaked to suit each vacancy and use it to detail the skills and abilities required, allowing candidates to highlight how their skills match the job.
Tailor each job description – A clear job description is useful when using corporate terminology and allows employees to understand the employee eligibility criteria.
Encourage hiring managers to identify potential applicants – Internal employees might be the best fit for a new role without realising. Hiring managers should be ready to identify the necessary skills and potential employees.
Provide constructive feedback – Constructive feedback is important, so focus on the employee’s strengths and weaknesses and encourage them to register interest in suitable future vacancies.

Balancing Internal and External Recruitment

The strategies for balancing external and internal recruitment include cultivating a diverse talent pool that will continuously reflect the company culture and values while communicating the opportunities for advancement within the organisation.

By cultivating a diverse talent pool internally through various initiatives like diversity and inclusion training, companies can ensure the finding of qualified internal candidates from different experiences and backgrounds. Regularly reassessing the company culture and values can also help companies attract external candidates while creating inclusive environments for the current employees.

By openly communicating the opportunities for advancement in the company, it encourages development and growth while demonstrating to internal and external candidates that there is more room for career progression. Finding the right balance requires strategic thinking and planning but can help your company get a more dynamic and successful workforce.

When The Internal Candidate Pool is Restricted, You Can Lean on Olive Recruit

After careful consideration and planning, it is clear that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to recruiting internally. Both the external and internal options bring plenty of benefits, and our team at Olive Recruit can help you determine the right choice.

Successful strategies involve a mix of internal and external recruitment while carefully weighing each option for each position. The goal is to find the balance to bring the most value to the company and the employees.