How to Maximize Your Talent Pool with These 5 Internal Recruitment Strategies

According to a 2023 BambooHR survey of 1,500 US employees, one in five think about quitting their current job every week, and one in 10 are so unhappy that they consider quitting daily. Internal recruiting is one effective way to help your people feel more valued and happy at your company.

Internal recruitment is an often-overlooked aspect of hiring that saves you time and money but also shows employees that you’re invested in helping them advance their careers.

Failing to capitalize on internal recruitment can result in good, qualified people slipping right through your fingers while you struggle to attract and onboard someone else.

Plenty of your employees are qualified and ready to seek new challenges. They’re just waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Read on to better understand the ins and outs of internal recruitment and how it can benefit your organization.

What Is Internal Recruitment?

Internal recruitment  is the process of hiring someone from within your existing business structure to fill a vacant position for your company. Some of the main types of internal recruitment include:

• Promotions
• Transfers
• Employee referrals
• Moving temporary employees to full-time positions

Setting up a hiring system for internal candidates can make your job much easier and cut down on your time filling vacant positions.

External recruitment  is the process of hiring people from outside your organization to fill your vacancies. In some cases, this involves “headhunting,” or having recruiters directly reach out to qualified people. In others, it involves posting a job description and evaluating those who respond until you connect with the right candidate.

How Does Internal Recruitment Work?

Although internal recruitment might sound complex, it’s actually very simple. The key is to understand your in-house talent and their long-term career goals. While each organization may have its own unique approach, there are a few universal principles to follow for successful internal recruitment:

• Establish who’ll make hiring and job-posting decisions.
• Outline a policy for how to post job positions.
• Create an internal recruitment strategy to guide the process.
• Use an application tracking system to keep track of candidates throughout the hiring process.
• Communicate open employee positions via email, internal newsletters, internal job boards, or chatting with managers.
• Provide details of the job description. Even if you hire internally, you want to make sure that the best candidates apply.
• Screen candidates. Hold internal candidates to the same standard as external candidates.
• Promote employees fairly by maintaining transparency throughout the process.
• Provide feedback to applicants who didn’t get the job on what skills may help them qualify in the future. Don’t send them a generic rejection letter.

The 5 Biggest Advantages of Internal Recruitment

1. You Already Know Internal Candidates

Internal recruitment carries less risk. While you may never have seen the given employee doing that specific job before, you have firsthand knowledge of how they perform, how they fit into the company culture, how they handle conflicts and problems, and so on, which means you can be confident in whom you’re hiring.

By contrast, external candidates for a job come with a significant amount of risk. Even when they come highly recommended from reliable sources, there’s still a chance that they’re not going to measure up, stick around, or fit the culture, and that can prove costly.

Some experts claim that hiring a new employee can cost 2 to 3 times that employee’s salary. Mis-hiring is a common—and expensive—problem, and many companies have higher turnover rates as a result.

Even the best interview questions or the most thorough reference checks can’t always solve this problem, as it’s hard to get a feel for how someone performs without actually seeing them work.

In many situations, the only way to truly put their performance as an employee to the test is to give them the job and put them on the payroll. And if they don’t meet expectations, you have yourself a mis-hire.

2. Internal Recruitment Reduces Hiring Costs

A major benefit of hiring internally is that not only do you avoid a lot of the costs and risks of a bad hire, but you  also  save on other costs during the onboarding process.

Internal recruitment reduces costs because you don’t have to post and pay for ads on job boards, use resume databases to find employees, or pay for background checks on internal hires. If your hires need a background check, internal candidates should already have one.

By saving on recruitment costs and reducing the risk of hiring someone who doesn’t fit, internal recruiting allows you to make smarter, more efficient hiring decisions.

3. Onboarding Internal Candidates Is Much Easier

Internal candidates already know whether or not they like the company—they’ve already decided whether or not it’s worth sticking around. That’s a big deal, considering 44% of new hires have had second thoughts about a new job within the first week.

If a candidate is applying for an internal employee position, it’s usually a sign that they’re willing to invest more career time into your organization. Otherwise, they would be applying for jobs elsewhere.

This means you’re less likely to have to replace them soon after hiring in case they feel that the job, the team, or the organization wasn’t what they expected. It also means you’ll spend less time on training and onboarding because the candidate is already familiar with some or all of the systems they’ll be using in their new position.

Note: We said less time on onboarding, not no time on onboarding. It’s still important to onboard your internal hires!

4. Internal Recruitment Saves Time

External recruiting can be a time-consuming process. You may spend hours, or even weeks, searching for the right candidate, reviewing resumes, and conducting interviews, only to end up with a handful of qualified applicants. In some cases, you might not attract the right talent at all.

With internal recruitment, it’s much easier to get the word out. You can announce the open position to the entire company in minutes, and interested employees already know where to apply.

While you’ll still need to review the candidates, the process is often faster and more efficient than external recruiting.

5. Internal Recruitment Boosts Company Loyalty and Engagement

Most importantly, internal recruiting is crucial for morale and engagement.

Your employees want opportunities for growth, learning, and progress.

As they continue to work for your organization, they will be looking for ways to move up—to increase their status, to better their pay, and to expand upon their current talents and responsibilities. Hiring from within your workforce is one way to provide such opportunities.

Internal Recruitment Next Steps

Just like a new hire, an internal candidate still needs to undergo an effective onboarding process. While it might not be as intense as that of an external hire, it’s important that you provide all the necessary support to make their transition to the new role easier.