When hiring for an open position, you may be wondering if your best bet is internal recruitment or to hire a newcomer.

This article makes the case for internal hiring and how it can be a great morale booster, resource saver, and culture builder.  

What is Internal Recruiting?

HR leaders use internal recruitment to fill positions with current employees. Internal hiring can be across job functions, managerial levels, teams, and departments.  Internal recruitment is the preferred hiring strategy for most companies. Internal hiring has been found to be 6 times more effective than all other types of hiring. Since the pandemic, internal hiring has increased by about 20% across the world.

Internal Recruiting as a Corporate Culture Key

Want better performance at the top?

Your first step is to promote from within.

Your current pool of talent has already received tons of time, money, and resources so why not leverage that and build loyalty simultaneously?

Recent studies show that talent recruited from current staff members led to more productivity and improved employee engagement.

So there's really no reason a company should not be promoting from within their current ranks—and encouraging employees to consider the option.

According to SHRM, "87 percent [of companies] said that having a strong internal mobility program—where employees are encouraged to apply for new roles within their organization—would definitely help with attraction and retention efforts. However, only one-third reported that their company has such a program."  As we've talked about before, all businesses should be encouraging their employees to further their career skill set. The logical next step to this further training and experience is to move employees up through the company's ranks—as far as they're interested in going.

Related: How to Measure & Improve Employee Morale

Internal Recruitment Methods

Internal hiring...

1. Promotions

2. Lateral moves

3. Referrals

4. Part-time to full-time

5. Bring 'em back

It is essential for HR leaders to document their internal hiring policy—one that is fair to internal applicants, sets clear expectations for prospects, and explains the selection decision process.

Disadvantages of Internal Recruitment to Keep in Mind

While internal hiring is a great strategy for many companies, we wanted to bring some disadvantages of internal recruitment to your attention:

1. It can be awkward

2. Reduces your options

3. Limits outside perspectives

4. Leaves a hole to fill

5. Leading to conflict

What Does Internal Recruiting Do for Morale?

Promoting internally rather than hiring outside the company is an impactful way to bring team members closer together. When an outsider is brought into a position a longtime employee has been vying for, tensions will mount, and morale will sink.

The resulting feeling for that employee is: why bother?

Internal recruiting has the following benefits:

 
• reduces hiring and onboarding timeline
 
• increase employee morale
 
• increases employee loyalty
 
• increases employee engagement
 
• saves money in training a new employee from the ground up

Boosting employee morale is a key part of creating a winning culture. And a company's hiring practices can have a direct impact on that morale. If internal recruiting isn't possible for some reason, at least involve current employees in the hiring process.

You can do this by letting them be part of their new team members' interview and selection process.

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