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The jobs market is surprisingly robust at the moment, given the volatility in the surrounding economic landscape.
Fertile job opportunities are good for competition, though, and require you as a business to reckon with your offering to new candidates. With more employees likely to leave for better opportunities, it is also key to reconsider your internal arrangements – including your framework for hiring.
Creating a robust program for hiring internally can be a mutually beneficial arrangement, with significant benefits to your business in the short and the long term. Here, we will explore some of these key benefits, and how internal hiring processes can bring them forward.
A Known Quantity
Firstly, and perhaps most obviously: internal candidates are known quantities to your business. Having been an employee for some time, they are professionally known to your existing management staff and to your business as a whole. You already have an intimate insight into their professional capabilities, from overall strengths and weaknesses to the specifics of their day-to-day contributions.
This allows you to more quickly and effectively evaluate a given candidate’s suitability for a given role. On a wider level, it ensures you already have a pool of suitable candidates from which to choose, making the initial hiring process much quicker and easier.
Minimal Downtime
Not only does hiring internally make the application and interview process quicker and easier, but it also speeds up the onboarding process after a candidate is successful. They will already be familiar with the internal workings of the business, and maybe even the department in question; they will also already have professional and social relationships with other employees.
You will also have advance knowledge of the kind of training the candidate needs within their new role, enabling you to line up programmes from leadership development services to suit your growth strategy. As a result, less time and energy are required for you as a business to train the employee, and less downtime is experienced as a result of the vacancy.
Clear Paths for Progression
There are indirect benefits to creating a robust internal hiring system, which can improve the health and longevity of your business by fostering a better environment for your staff as a whole. By making clear your processes for hiring internally, and by foregrounding existing employees in any business growth, you are demonstrating clear paths of progression for your staff. If they feel they have a route to career progression, they are more likely to stay – lowering staff turnover, alongside its associated costs.
Morale-Building
Hiring internally enables you to preserve existing professional and social relationships within your business. With less employees leaving for positions elsewhere, you can curate a skilled team that understands one another and works well together.
Combined with the incentives provided by progression opportunities, this can lead to increased morale within your departments. Work is, in essence, easier and more rewarding for your staff on an individual and collective basis – encouraging more to stay, and to give more of their energy to your business.
