Essay: Advantages of internal recruitment

In today’s age, employees are always looking for the next bigger and better job. Whether the factor is pay or advancing to a higher position, employers will always have turn over. When employees leave, companies are faced with having to fill that position. They must either hire externally or hire from within. When a company decides to hire internally, it makes the most sense because that candidate is already a part of the company and knows the culture and policies of the company. In this paper I will specifically be talking about internal recruiting. I will talk about that advantages, disadvantages, how to better the disadvantages, and the legal issues that arise. After the conclusion of this paper you will be able to understand the main objectives surrounding internal recruiting.
The first advantage of internal recruitment is reduced time to hire. When a company has to recruit externally, recruiting teams find candidates through sourcing such as online websites, job postings, or college career fairs. They must evaluate them, if the recruiting team likes what they see then they proceed from there. Then they must try and persuade them to join their company. This all takes time. In turn, internal candidates are already working for the company. This means that the time they would need to find and engage with the current candidate is much less the looking externally. With the candidate already working for the company, this makes things much easier for the recruiters. This allows them to already know that they are already prescreened and can easily track down their work record. The recruiter may not always need to conduct full interviews with department managers. This could happen if the candidate is already in the department and trying to get the new job in that department. All of these actions reduce the time that is spent in the hiring process.
The second advantage of internal recruitment is that it shortens the time that an employee becomes comfortable within the company and the job. With hiring internally, the candidate already knows the policies and practices of the company and how it operates. The candidate may also be familiar with the people that they will be working with, this is especially true in the small business setting. In most job settings, candidates could already know the content of what their new job entails. This is especially true if the move within the same department.
The third advantage in internal recruitment is that it costs less. In an article written by Nikoletta Bika on recruiting she states, “Research has shown that external hiring may cost 1.7 times more than internal hiring.” When recruiting internally, recruiters usually don’t post ads on job boards. Posting openings on job boards costs money. When informing internal candidates about new job openings, companies have multiple options. They can either email or post in their company newsletter. The company could also post on a bulletin board in an area such as a break room. Next, the company doesn’t have to subscribe to a resume database. This database sources passive candidates on their database, but instead the recruiter is able to ask managers about possible internal candidates or speak with coworkers and see who might fit the open role. Finally, you don’t have to pay for background checks. Since the internal candidate is working for you, the company has already payed to do one when they were first hired.
The fourth and final advantage of internal recruitment is that it shows your employees that you care. Hiring internally sends a strong message to your employees that you value them, care about them, and want them to advance their career in your company. This all helps keep employee morale high. When employees are able to change roles in the company, this helps develop them professionally and when other employees see that they may have a similar opportunity they work harder. This all helps the company build a culture of trust which enhances employee retention and engagement.
Although there are multiple advantages of recruiting internally, there are disadvantages. The first disadvantage is that it can create resentment amongst the employees and managers of the company. When employees that are considered for a role could eventually feel upset or hurt all because a fellow colleague or someone else in the company gets the job. Also, many managers often are scared to lose the member of the team if they are a good employee. The manager may even go out of their way to try and block the transfer or promotion.
The second disadvantage is that with internal recruitment, you may leave a hole in your workforce. When internally promoting, once you promote that candidate their old position becomes vacant. With this, a company has to make a series of moves and promotions to fill the spot as quickly as possible or risk the disruption of business operations. If you would have hired externally, you would have had to only fill one position, now in essence you have to fill two. This may make the company turn to externally recruitment in addition to the internal hire you just did.
The third disadvantage of internal recruitment is you may develop an inflexible culture. When a company does most of their hiring internally, your business can develop a stagnant culture. This culture can develop because employees get too comfortable with how things are accomplished within the company. This leads to employees having issues spotting inefficiencies and experimenting with new ways of completing a job because they are comfortable. Having an inflexible workforce ultimately causes more problems with leadership rather than lower level positions. This is why external hires help by shaking up the culture of the business and the external hire can bring in a new and different perspective on jobs.
With many companies turning to internal recruitment, there are ways that a company can reduce the disadvantages that come along with internal recruitment. A way to reduce disadvantages in internal recruitment is to be transparent throughout the entire process. Make sure the internal candidate understands the company’s hiring process and why they weren’t selected. Companies hiring policies change a lot, so it is always necessary to let candidates know especially internal candidates.  A recruiter can also give the candidate feedback about their interview to help them be more successful. Along with this a company should not communicate an opening if they already have a candidate in mind. When a company communicates an open position in their company, it gives employees hope that they could possibly be hired for that position. If the hiring team has a candidate in mind, they should reach out to them first, instead of having others apply.
The final way to get rid of disadvantages in internal recruitment is as a company you should use a balance of external and internal recruiting. When a position becomes open, the recruiting team needs to decide what they should do. Do they decide to go with and external or internal hire? They can do this by basing it on the job requirement and the skills that your current employee has, as well as what a fresh mind from outside of the company could do as well. Even when a company decides there are certain legal issues that can arise, and we will discuss those.
In the final section of the paper we will discuss some of the major legal issues that arise in the hiring process. The first major legal issue that can arise is the pre-employment screenings and assessments. Many companies require that new or potential hires take a pre-employment assessment. The pre-employment assessment is an area that sees heavy lawsuits for companies. In an article written by Danny Kellman she states, “Assessments need to avoid the following: Discriminate or adversely affect a protected minority, require unreasonably high or restrictive standards that are not job relevant, and that do not invade privacy. Ways that companies can prove the test validation are by conducting a statistical study. By doing this it proves that the pre-employment assessment does not adversely impact protected groups. As a company when they are making decision on which pre-employment or talent assessment provider to select, make sure they can prove test validation.
The next area that legal issues can come about are during the interview. As a company you should come up with questions that are carefully throughout and are used in every interview. Just like the pre-employment assessment, a company needs to carefully select the questions, so that they are not to be discriminatory. The company should also explain all the job requirement in a way that provides an equal opportunity for every applicant. An example would be if the job requires the candidate be on call 24/7. As a hiring team you need to state this exactly how it is and not as a question like, “Do you take your kids to school?” If they hire should have a disability or certain religion, the EEOC states that as an employer, you need to provide reasonable accommodations for the employee or the job applicants’ religious beliefs or disabilities. Unless that it creates difficulty or adds unaffordable expenses to the employer.
With jobs always evolving, companies will always be faced with filling a role. After this paper you can see what a company and recruiting team see when they decide to hire internally. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages, even with the disadvantages the companies can find ways to lower the disadvantages. The companies will always face the legal issues in every aspect of business and they decide that internal recruitment is best for their company.