Building a team of skilled human resources professionals is vital to the success of your company. And when it comes time for you to fill a position in the HR department, you want to make sure you find the right person. When hiring for an HR role, you’re often left with two choices: promoting from within or hiring externally. Both bring unique advantages and challenges to the table, but which option is right for your business? Today, we’ll be exploring the process of internal vs. external recruiting to help you make the best decision for your organization.
Internal Recruiting
When a company wants to hire from within their own employee base, they will put a focus on internal recruiting. Why do companies hire from within? There can be several reasons that you may want to focus on recruiting internally—as well as a few key drawbacks.
The Pros
First and foremost, internal recruitment helps support your company in developing your own talent. This can help improve performance, job satisfaction, and retention. Internal recruiting is a great way to give employees who excel in their current positions a chance to grow and challenge themselves in a higher role.
Another major pro to internal recruitment is that it can benefit everyone, not just the employee who is promoted. This strategy keeps hiring costs down by saving on the cost of posting on job boards or utilizing recruiting agencies. Also, because it is a concrete indicator that your company values hard work and high performance, promoting internally can have a positive impact on your employee morale.
By using internal recruitment, your trust and credibility with employees improves. On top of that, the hiring manager is often knowledgeable about the candidates, and likely already has a relationship with them. Already having a good understanding of each candidate’s performance and skills gives you a massive advantage.
The Cons
One of the more obvious disadvantages of promoting from within is that it creates a domino effect—where you are constantly needing to fill the position that is being left by the employee who is promoted. While this isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have, your HR department now has to spend more time filling open positions, with the options slowly becoming more limited.
Another disadvantage of internal recruitment is that it can lead to a narrowing of ideas. Historically, employees tend to stick with the same or similar ideas and approaches they have always used. This could limit your company’s ability to think outside the box or try something new. If you are trying to bring in fresh, innovative thinkers to your open position, then internal recruitment may not be the best option.
External Recruiting
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have external recruiting. This is a method that works well for many companies. However, as with many other facets of business, there can be some disadvantages, too.
The Pros
Sometimes, a company finds that they need fresh ideas and perspectives brought into the mix. This is one of the greatest benefits of hiring externally: bringing in candidates with new strategies and outlooks that support your company’s goals and vision. This can be helpful if you want to take your company in a new direction, too.
When you hire externally, you are able to open up the position to a larger pool of prospects, too. If you only intend to hire internally, you might find that you only have a handful of employees with the necessary skills and qualities to fill your open position. Recruiting externally eliminates that issue. Moreover, you may find a candidate who has additional skills and experiences that enhance the role.
Another pro to recruiting externally is the use of a recruiting and staffing firm. With the help of professional recruiters, you can take a huge burden off your HR department and allow them to focus on other important areas of the business. A staffing agency utilizes their network of skilled professionals to find the ideal candidate for your company quickly and effectively.
The Cons
Bear in mind that external recruitment can be expensive, especially if your company doesn’t have a major budget for recruiting. You’ll have to take into account the expenses for recruiting agencies, advertising, online job boards, and more. If you’re doing the external hiring yourself (rather than hiring an agency), it’ll also likely take longer. Sifting through resumes, screening candidates, and an extensive interviewing process takes quite a bit of time. That’s why many organizations rely on a professional staffing partner to lighten their load.
Another disadvantage of hiring externally is the risk that your potential hire won’t fit in well with your company culture. Unfortunately, it can take several months to really understand an employee’s personality, behavior traits, leadership style, and more. A candidate may be the ideal fit on paper, but ultimately clash with your culture and the rest of your team.
Find Top HR Candidates Today
At HR Personnel Services, we take the time to understand each client’s vision, goals, plans, and culture. This allows us to recruit candidates who perfectly align with those values. Since 1995, we’ve sourced and placed the right HR professionals for clients of almost every size and specialty. If you’re ready to learn more about HR Personnel Services and how our recruitment solutions can benefit your business, be sure to contact us today!
