Why is Internal Hiring Important?

Internal hiring can be a good way to gain new skills without having to spend time and cost on looking for candidates externally. From limiting attrition to supporting your staff’s career progression, here are insights from recruiters, HR leaders, and executives on the importance of internal hiring.

Doesn’t Kill Employee Morale

It is extremely important for organizations to hire from within. This should be the foundation for developing talent and limiting attrition. There is nothing more demotivating for employees than being passed over for a leadership role by outside hires.

Organizations that continuously pass on internal candidates for leadership positions will kill their employee morale and force employee attrition. If your organization does not have an internal candidate that is equipped for the role, that is a direct failure by your company.

You should cultivate talent and train your people to move up in your organization. The goal should be to always have a long roster of talent that you can develop and move to strategic leadership roles.

These people know the company, know the culture and employees, and can seamlessly move into these roles with less downtime. Hiring new people should only be for entry-level and extremely specialized roles, not management.

Mark Smith
Program Chair, University of Advancing Technology

Develops a Committed Workforce

Internal hiring is important for several reasons, but one reason is that it can help to improve employee retention. When employees see opportunities for career advancement within their organization, they are more likely to stay with the company and invest in their work. This can lead to higher levels of employee engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity.

Internal hiring allows the organization to tap into the knowledge and skills of employees who are already familiar with the company culture and values, reducing the time and costs associated with onboarding new employees. The employer values their contributions and invests in their career development, which can help to create a more positive and committed workforce.

Salman Aslam
Managing Director, Omnicore Agency

Keeps Your Culture Strong

Hiring internally means keeping control over the culture you’re trying to create. New hires only stand to threaten that delicate butterfly that is culture unless you go to great lengths to verify their working style during the interview process.

Even if you’re careful, you don’t know how the new employee will be until they’re in the mix with the rest of your team. Hiring from within ensures you protect the culture you’ve built while proving to the rest of the team that you prioritize talent from within.

Jonathan Zacharias
Founder, GR0

Preserves Knowledge in the Company

Internal hiring and promotions are key to keeping hard-earned wisdom. While you can train new recruits with impeccable curricula and materials, nothing will replace the wisdom of a long-term employee who has weathered the storms and celebrated the triumphs alongside your company.

They simply have more context and can make decisions that take that context into account. They know the customers and have developed relationships, so keeping them around and rewarding their work with upward mobility or a change of scene can keep that knowledge with your organization. When someone leaves for a competitor, you can bet that hard-earned knowledge is going with them!

Gates Little
President and CEO, altLINE

Helps Your Team Progress

Internal hiring is crucial to show actively to your employees that you care about their progression, and that you can develop their skills to a point of career development through internal promotions.

Without internal progression, retention is likely to suffer as employees only see an “exit,” and no clear means of internal progression.

Tracey Beveridge
HR Director, Personnel Checks

Reduces External Recruitment Risks

Internal hiring is critical for companies as it helps reduce the risk associated with external recruitment, increases employee morale and engagement levels, and better fulfills managerial objectives.

An uncommon example of why internal hiring is beneficial is that it can help develop up-and-coming leaders and executives who have a deep understanding of the organization’s culture and values.

Hiring from within will allow those already familiar with the company to rise quickly in rank to positions of responsibility that many outside hires would need to be trained on before taking over. In addition, having a committed workforce from within fosters loyalty from team members, which further boosts overall productivity.

Grace He
People and Culture Director, Team Building

Eliminates Bad Calls for External Hires

Assessing cultural fit in advance is hard. And if you make the wrong call, culturally unfitting new hires will be gone within months. One advantage internal hires have is that you will already have a clear picture of their everyday behaviors.

Data you will not get in a one-off interview with externals. Don’t hire for skills; hire for attitude—and assessing attitude with internals is way easier.

Veronika Schäfer
Head of Learning Science, Zavvy

Spares HR From Drowning in Resumes

Resumes flood companies and we’ve all heard the stories of HR professionals who felt overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to process. So why not make their lives easier?

Internal recruitment can be a real game-changer for the recruiters’ workload, as it spares them the complex process of verifying new candidates’ qualifications. Cutting down recruitment stages is a perfect way of quickly covering emerging vacancies.

Not to mention reducing time-consuming onboarding processes. Sometimes the best solutions are hiding in plain sight, and managers overlook the fact that the most excellent candidate might be the one they work with every single day.

Martyna Szczesniak
Community Expert, MyPerfectResume

Bolsters Morale and Engagement

While there are many reasons to prioritize internal hiring, one of the most important is the message it communicates, being that the company values its employees and cares about their career progression.

When a workforce feels valued with a clear path to promotions and increased income, it boosts morale, engagement, and retention.

Hiring from existing talent sends a positive message and confirms the company’s commitment to rewarding talent and hard work. Internal hiring helps keep the highest performers by offering them tangible career progression within the organization.

Candace Barr
Owner, Executive Resume Writer, and Job Search Consultant, Strategic Resume

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