The internal recruitment is popular among organizations as well among employees. It benefits both employer as well as employees. Typically, companies post job positions on their intranet portal, establishing direct communication between hiring manager and candidate looking for change in job position. Internal recruitment (also known as internal transfer) offers many advantages to both employee as well as employer with some disadvantages.
For employer, internal recruitment offers direct savings over cost of external recruitment. It also saves time, efforts and resources needed to do search for external candidate. Internal sources of recruitment facilitates direct communication happens between hiring manager and candidate on open position and avoids other formalities involved otherwise. Since internal recruits are familiar with overall operations of organization it benefits for hiring manager to minimize learning curve and hence increase in productivity. Some organizations offer specialize training courses to enhance skills so that internal human resources can be internally used across various lines of business as and when required. This practice is particularly seen in large industrial manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical industry and other larger sector of businesses. Internal sources of recruitment thus saves time and cost associated with external recruitment utilizing human resources within company. Therefore, internal recruitment helps to fertilize strong bond, trust and attachment between employees and employer, resulting in better performance at work space. Internal recruitment also helps to minimize brain drain to out of company and tries to keep skilled workers within one company. Companies spend lot of money to train its employees and internal sources of recruitment helps to convert training cost to actual company profit over period of time. Trained and skilled employees are tangible asset to company. Internal recruitment helps to retain this asset within company.
For employees, internal recruitment offers choices and new opportunities within organization. This in turn offers opportunity to look for alternative to existing job profile as a part of job satisfaction. Existing employees therefore gets opportunity to enhance their skills and develop expertise into various fields across various organizations. This keeps employees motivated and committed to give their best performance. Keeping job in the same company also gives employee peace of mind and stability against job security worries. This in turn increases employee’s productivity and hence benefits employer. Another significant advantage to employees is that over period of time employees can develop multi platform skills during their tenure in organization. This is in particularly true in modern industries like information technology field where multiple skill sets are required and are added advantage for job profile. Internal recruitment gives stable job, constant source of income and keeps employee loyal to one company. Internal sources of recruitment opportunities help employees to void time and effort to look for job outside organization. Since internal recruitment keeps flow of employees within one company, it helps to create strong personal bond among employees and creates virtual network within organization that helps to accelerate day to day operations to be efficient due to personal contacts developed during employee’s tenure in organization. Therefore, larger organization has special HR division to manage internal recruitment process.
With advantages, internal recruitment also comes up with some disadvantages both for employees as well as for the employer. One of the flip sides of the internal sources of recruitment is, it keeps internal employee movement within organization and over time employees get used to internal operations, strategies and general know how. This in turn creates phenomenon of ‘group think’ in which people thinks in same way, resist to any new change and tries to keep processes intact benefiting them. For any change in policy or change in the business direction which might cause change in their operating habits, they resist change or that can affect their productivity. This in turn affects company’s overall readiness to respond to changing demands of global market and hence negatively affects company’s competitive advantage. This is in particularly true for filling up higher management positions, therefore many companies prefer external skill sets while filling up key strategic management position. Internal recruitment also creates competition among groups to attract best talent within company. To avoid frequent job shift within company, some companies have rules pertaining to internal sources of recruitment. With advances in technology and availability of highly educated work force internal sources of recruitment can prevent flow of advanced skilled workers within company and can prevent company to have competitive edge over rivals. An employee might overlook or tend to avoid outside job positions and might lost touch with general awareness about jobs demand, present job market trend and importantly latest skill sets. This in case is disadvantage in cases where employee looses job during reduction in force. In that situation, skill sets possessed by employee during his or her tenure in one company might not be sufficient to compete in job market and might be tougher to compete.
Internal recruitment is powerful tool to retain employees within organization. Employer has to make smart decision whether a job position needs to be filling in internally or from out side. Looking at both advantage and disadvantages of recruitment, both employees and employers can get benefited from it.