Yesterday’s Advisor explored the pros for hiring within. Today we’ll explore some of the regular difficulties, and how to minimize them.
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Doesn’t an Internal Hire Mean Just Another Job to Fill?
Well, yes. When a chair breaks on your lawn set, it doesn’t matter how much you rearrange the remaining furniture, you will still be down a chair. Luckily, jobs are more dynamic than lawn furniture. In this regard, the largest advantage comes from the fact that hiring from within should always leave a junior opening and fill a senior one. Consider the greater ease at hiring for a junior position versus a senior one:
- The candidate pool for junior-level positions is often larger.
- Candidates often don’t need as much training to fill a junior-level position.
- If the candidate you replaced had risen up in the salary range by the time you moved him or her to a better position, you can save money by hiring lower in the salary range.
- Junior and entry-level positions, while important, are often more easily covered by existing staff than senior positions.
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Won’t Hiring Within Make Others Jealous?
It is true that hiring within can make other employees jealous, specifically, those employees who also wanted the job. But there are ways to mitigate this problem. For example, don’t hand-pick an employee to fill the open position, even if you have one candidate in mind.
Instead, it’s best to open up the job to anyone who wants to apply, then interview each applicant as you would with outside candidates. Those who didn’t make the cut may be disappointed, but most will roll with it as long as they believe the procedure was fair.
Some of the Same; More of the Good
et’s take a quick look at the risks of hiring within and see how they stack up against the risks of hiring externally:
- It’s true that hiring within fills one position but creates another. You may be able to fill that opening with another internal candidate. Either way, it is generally preferable to have outside candidates applying for the easier-to-fill, cheaper junior position.
- If you hire externally, your employees might feel overlooked and unimportant. If you hire from within the company, those who don’t make the cut can feel overlooked as well. However, if you have to risk upsetting your employees either way, it makes a lot more sense to at least make them feel like they were considered for the job.
Is internal hiring for you? It saves recruiting time and costs, training time and costs, gets you on track faster, and helps employee engagement and retention. Hiring from an external candidate pool does none of these things. Next time you have an open position, look at your current employees—you might be surprised at what you find.
Hiring is just one of the many challenges that human resources professionals face every day. It’s the brave new world of HR! Are you prepared for changes that are unparalleled in scope and impact?
- Employees all over the world, many of whom you’ve never met in person
- Technological advances and big data
- Talent management challenges like Millennials managing Baby Boomers you once thought would have retired years ago
- Big data on everything from hiring strategies to retention predictions
- Sweeping regulatory changes in the areas of health care, immigration, and privacy that have necessitated massive changes in the way you do business
- And the new normal—doing more … with less
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It’s a lot to keep track of—and it’s not going to get easier. To help you get your head around big-picture strategies for 2015 and beyond, HR’s Game Plan for the Future provides a detailed rundown of trends, case studies, and best practices in the following areas:
- Recruiting and Hiring
- Onboarding
- Social Media and Technology
- Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS)
- Flexibility and Work/Life Balance
- Outsourcing
- Diversity
- Talent Management
- Employee Engagement and Retention
- Succession Planning
- Telecommuting
Find out more or order here—HR’s Game Plan for the Future.