Advantages And Disadvantages Of Internal Recruitment

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Uh-oh! It looks like life has thrown another curveball at you. One of the members of your business’s management team has resigned and you need to start thinking about how you’re going to fill that opening. Where are you going to find someone with the right qualifications? The right experience? The right personality to fit your company’s unique corporate culture?

Maybe you won’t have to look that far after all. Maybe internal recruitment is the answer. Promotions and department transfers are a great way to make the most out of the resources you have, but are there any downsides? If you’ve been thinking about shifting your hiring practices to focus on internal recruitment, here are some things you should know:

The Good

First, the most obvious benefit of internal recruitment might be the amount of time, energy, and money it can save you. Recruiting externally takes a lot of work and it can get very complicated, very quickly, even with an experienced hiring staff and the best applicant tracking software at your side. Internal recruitment streamlines the process and greatly reduces costs.

That’s not the only advantage internal recruitment provides, though. It also lessens onboarding time, as current employees require less orientation and are already “in the system,” so to speak. This helps soften the learning curve while also providing you with assurance that your “new” employee has already proven themselves an ideal fit for your corporate culture. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, internal promotion provides employees with a sense of accomplishment and mobility, which in turn helps employee retention.

The Bad

Internal recruitment is not without its disadvantages, of course. Chief among these is the fact that, if you’re moving or promoting an employee from one position to another, that still leaves an opening that needs to be filled. Unless you’re planning to completely eliminate that employee’s previous position, the buck has to stop somewhere. A businesses talent pool is a lot like a gene pool; outsiders have to be brought at some point to keep things from turning stagnant.

Indeed, stagnancy can be a big problem when internal recruitment is favored to the detriment of all other hiring strategies. External recruitment is important not just for supplying new “bodies” to your workforce, but also for supplying new ideas. There’s a name for environments where a single culture dominates without ever being challenged: an echo chamber.

The Ugly

Of all the disadvantages that internal recruitment can have, the worst one is in the danger of setting employees against one another. Promoting current employees to new positions is a great way of inspiring ambition and a healthy sense of competition. There is a fine line, however, between healthy competition and cut-throat toxicity. If your employees begin to feel like certain coworkers are being treated as favorites, or that they themselves are being unfairly held down, the results can be disastrous.

That said, the best tactic for any business to take in regards to the internal versus external recruitment debate is to find a balance between both. There are many pros and cons evident in either approach. Often, the key to success is not simply choosing one over the other, but in developing an equilibrium wherein their collective positives help to counteract their negatives. Internal recruitment should not be viewed as a one-size-fits-all solution to your hiring needs, but rather a valuable tool in a diverse toolkit.