Recruiting Staff Internally

To recruit and promote from within an organisation offers many benefits, but also introduces some disadvantages and limitations.

Benefits of recruiting internally can include:
• Saving on advertising costs.
• Recruitment is quicker for a position.
• Reduces the need to involve external parties by using your own HR (assuming one already exists), increasing timeliness of organising necessary documentation.
• There is a good understanding of current staff capabilities and how they ‘fit' with the organisational culture.
• Reducing the need for extensive induction and acclimatisation to a new organisation.
• There is an existing awareness of the organisation's products and services.
• There is an existing understanding of the organisations policies and procedures.
• Overall recruitment costs are less.
• Promoting within can encourage loyalty to an organisation and longer-term commitment to career development by employees.
• Building on already existing positive working relationships.

A number of disadvantages and limitations can also arise from internal recruitment, including:
• Further training and development are needed, incurring costs and time to bring the internal candidate up to the desired level of performance.
• If no internal candidates are successful, this may demotivate an entire team as they may feel undervalued.
• There may arise some friction or resentment in some of the workforce, especially from those who were unsuccessful.
• There is usually only a small group of people from which to choose, limiting attracting better experienced and/or qualified candidates.
• There is a reduction in diversity of applications.
• It could reinforce any existing negative work relationships.
• It may inadvertently introduce discriminatory practices.
• The opportunity to bring new ideas and ‘fresh eyes' to an organisation is missed.