Regardless of an organisation’s size, annual revenue, or personnel count, hiring new employees is a difficult task. Likewise, losing a key employee and finding a replacement may be expensive and time-consuming.
A school of thinking asserts internal hiring is one of the best recruiting techniques. However, given that you already have the personnel on hand, there can also be a need to upgrade their skills within your organisation or provide a fresh perspective and analysis that the team might be lacking.
One of the major issues facing HR professionals is effectively filling the roles within an organisation. It might be challenging to select the best candidate for a position when such a wide variety of applicants—each with distinctive talents and experience—apply for the post.
Internal applicants are frequently ideal for available positions, but it’s not always simple to find those with the abilities and skills you require. To expand and strengthen your team, you must identify outstanding internal candidates.
Recommended Webinar: Best Practices in Recruitment
What Is Internal Recruitment?
Internal recruiting is the process of locating and engaging prospects for a new position within the same organisation. Internal hiring is usually called internal recruitment, which is getting candidates for open positions within an organisation or firm from within the existing workforce. In internal recruitment, a new employee is found for a vacant position from inside the company’s existing departments, including personnel from various job positions and roles and promoted personnel from the current department.
Internal hiring or recruitment tries to guarantee that the new hire already has intimate knowledge of the business and its policies while fostering employee loyalty and a sense of advancement. This is advantageous to any organisation, but how do you go about developing a plan that encourages this hiring and combines it with other factors so that you can identify the best candidates for the positions in your company?
A clear internal recruitment policy that can be used as a tool to aid in internal recruitment is the answer.
Internal recruitment policy helps you design your internal recruitment strategy; It enables you set clear guidelines and provides a framework that you can build on in your quest to identify the best internal talent for various positions.
3 Types of Internal Recruitment
Talent can be found internally in a variety of ways. Every sort of internal recruitment addresses a specific demand where you can require more or different talent.
1. Role Change
A role change occurs when you assign someone to a new position in which they are responsible for new tasks. A role change can involve promotion in some cases and a lateral move in others. By implementing role modifications, your company can more effectively distribute and use the talent it already has. The optimal use of role changes is to redistribute talent proficiencies. After starting in one position, employees may occasionally discover that they would be better suited for another.
2. Promotion
Promotions typically involve a new title and may be new or more duties. Pay increases are frequently part of promotions, although not always. A more significant culture project aims to increase engagement and job satisfaction, and promotions are a component of that. Promotions offer a professional path and keep teams inspired to perform and be at their highest level. Be aware that upskilling and additional training are frequently required to receive promotions. A promotion will require someone to work outside their comfort zone and possibly outside their existing skill set to succeed in their new role.
3. Transfer
In the course of our working life, transfers are something that we all come to expect. In today’s mobile workplaces, where staff members might move from one location to another and frequently find themselves in a new city, transfers are even more prevalent. Moving between departments is also considered a personnel transfer. In both permanent transfers and temporary contract assignments, you can see salespeople migrating from marketing departments and vice versa.
The Process of Picking the Right Employee for Internal Vacancies
Anyone employed by the company can apply for a position through the internal recruitment process unless they have already been promoted or have received a recommendation from their line manager.
Giving employees the right kind of support can help with motivation and demonstrate their skill sets in relation to the job requirements. Therefore, the internal recruitment procedure should adopt the following process to uncover certain important factors for anyone considering applying.
Create a comprehensive job description
Having a clear job description available may appear less crucial when hiring internally, especially if the hiring manager is seeking to expand their team. The manager could believe the internal candidate is familiar with the intricacies of the position by default, but that isn’t always the case. Hiring managers and potential applicants can carefully evaluate who genuinely has the ability to perform effectively in the role by creating a clear job description
Consider a worker's reputation
Before making a recruiting choice, you should evaluate an internal candidate’s reputation in addition to their technical capability and a balanced set of soft skills. Simply put, just because a worker is effective in their current position or is loved by management doesn’t necessarily mean their coworkers respect them. This is important if the open post requires a promotion or involves taking on a leadership position. Speak with the prospect’s coworkers if you consider them potential internal candidates to get a sense of their reputation. Positive feedback is frequently given, especially if the prospect would make an outstanding employee. However, you might also discover that the person’s success isn’t completely their own doing, that they are difficult to deal with, or that they haven’t gained the respect of their peers in any other way, all of which could be red flags that hiring them would be a mistake.
Execute an assessment
When hiring internally, a traditional interview might not be required; however, the candidates still must be properly evaluated and assessed. This could take the form of a casual interview with the hiring manager, or applicants might be required to take a test or submit a portfolio of work for review. When hiring internally, leadership assessment tools make it simple to obtain and analyse a candidate’s prior accomplishments and advancement within the organisation. By conducting these assessments, managers can be sure that they are selecting employees based on their qualifications and fit for the position. Therefore, the choice should be as impartial and unbiased as possible.
Referrals from supervisor
The employee referral program includes recommendations from supervisors. A supervisor who works for the company may suggest a performing worker to a manager or supervisor in a separate division to fill the open position in a supervisory referral. It is a very effective business approach since it fosters employee loyalty and raises everyone’s level of happiness with the organisation. Internal hiring allows you to speak directly with candidates and supervisors to learn more about their backgrounds, work ethics, etc. Before interviewing applicants, you must speak with prospective and present managers to ascertain their needs and problems.
7 Advantages of Internal Recruitment
Recruiting internally makes sense for the hiring team unless the employee lacks the necessary skills for the new position. But by promoting internal job switching, an organisation may keep its best employees rather than losing them to rivals. Let us consider some of the benefits of internal recruitment;
1. Simple pre-employment vetting
Candidates can take pre-employment tests and receive scores based on their responses to questions. With an existing employee, the procedure is simplified because the business already has background information on the applicant and can simply arrange an evaluation around their time.
2. Spending less time and money
The decreased costs of this recruitment process are one of its most prominent benefits. Hiring someone internally indicates that HR managers already know their ability and expertise. By promoting current employees, you can save all the time and money associated with looking for, interviewing, and choosing qualified new applicants.
3. Excellent cultural fit
Many businesses experience increased turnover rates due to the frequent and costly issue of mishiring. It’s crucial to hire people for attitude and behaviour as well as skills because of this. Specifically, choose employees who are culturally compatible and share your beliefs. One of the main advantages of hiring internally is that you are already aware of the fit. The HR manager can tell if someone is a fantastic cultural fit because they already work for the organisation. They were first hired because they shared the organisation’s beliefs and principles, which can be an essential deciding factor.
4. Reduce employee turnover
Unplanned employee departures are typically harmful for any organisation. If you have a high employee turnover rate, it may be a clue that something is wrong with your business. You may increase the likelihood of internal applicants staying with your organisation long-term by pairing them with roles that meet their interests and special skill sets.
5. Promoting a culture of advancement
Companies can promote from within rather than hire outsiders to cover a skills vacuum, helping to create a culture of promotion. Promoting current employees boosts morale and offers every worker something to strive for, even though it could take longer for a team member to obtain experience.
6. Increases team morale
Concerned about losing a talented employee? People occasionally feel that they aren’t being pushed anymore and are eager to try something new. Internal hiring allows an organisation to retain skills and expertise rather than completely losing it (perhaps to a competitor). Internal hiring can improve employee morale for both the person and the company as a whole. Internal promotions, transfers, and role changes are all examples of how to show employees that they can accomplish significant work and advance when the time is appropriate.
7. Less ambiguity
The uncertainty associated with the entire recruitment process is another factor you should consider when organising your hiring process. The underlying cause is a persistent worry that a recruiting mistake will be made. However, when you hire internally, you will only advance qualified staff members who excelled in their prior roles, significantly reducing uncertainty
In the end, internal hiring helps a company keep its best employees. An effective internal recruitment plan enables an organisation to make the most of its existing personnel, allowing them to advance and thrive, even while it isn’t the best option for every firm or function.
In order to help your organisation hire the best employees, Workforce Group offers a series of assessments that can be used for pre-and post-hire testing.
Akindele Afolabi
Director, Workforce Resourcing