Recruitment: Pros and Cons
Recruitment is essential in shaping a workplace and ensuring the business is moving forward. Every company either large or small must recruit. This has proven to be the most challenging part businesses encounter if not handled appropriately. Finding the right candidate to fill up a role requires time, attention, skills, and investment. Striking a balance in hiring be it internal/external recruitment can evolve quickly in a business changing its landscape, sometimes the turnover can be skyrocketed fueled by several factors including workers finding a work-life balance.
In this article, we would be looking at internal recruitment, external recruitment, and also the pros and cons.
What is internal recruitment?
Internal recruitment simply means hiring potential employees from within your current workplace. This is a process of acquiring employees for a vacant position. In internal recruitment, the vacant position is identified, and the employees in the company are notified either by posting it on the information board or a general newsletter mail is sent to tell whoever that’s interested in applying for the vacant position. Sometimes candidates are vetted using different methods based on their years of experience, qualifications, skills, and expertise. It’s simply a human resource strategy that prioritizes hiring current employees for new/open positions within the company. There are several ways internal recruitments are done which include;
PROMOTIONS– If an employee’s performance in a company is very impressive and if they are willing to take on more responsibilities, you may give them a promotion after conducting an interview.
- TRANSFERS– Employees being transferred is often widespread, their job roles/responsibilities do not change, only because they are moved from one department to another.
- An intern in a company can be contracted to become a permanent employee, this process is called confirmation.
- Referrals have also become a very vital part of recruitment. If an employee refers a candidate within the company with specific qualifications, this saves time and cost.
The Pros of Internal recruitment
Cost-effectiveness – Hiring internally can reduce the cost of spending money in trying to advertise these open roles on Job boards, social networks, and professional platforms. This also saves cost per hire in terms of recruiting expenses.
Decreased onboarding time– one of the most characteristic of internal recruitment is that the processing time is significantly faster compared to external recruitment. When candidates must fill up a position, there are already professionals who have passed the company’s filter in terms of culture and policies ready to fill up these positions.
Strengthen employee engagement – Giving employees more opportunities to advance their careers from within gives them an opportunity for development. It sends a message across that they are being valued by either promotion or letting them move to positions that might interest them.
Cons Of Internal Recruitment
For every advantage, there are also disadvantages that every employer should be aware of before making any decision.
New vacant positions– Internally hiring a candidate will leave their previous position vacant. With this process, you will need to hire an external candidate at some point to fill in the vacant role to ensure all positions are filled up.
Reduced Talent Pool– Hiring internally could hinder an external jobseeker from getting into the position. A new employee may bring with them skills and talents that are innovative and refreshing ideas that could benefit the team and the company.
Constant internal recruitment can result in a stagnant culture. Bringing other candidates from outside can shake up a stagnating corporate culture in terms of introducing new ideas and also challenging old ways of thinking because external recruits bring in fresh insight, and knowledge, and with this – they can inspire other colleagues internally.
If many employees from within the company want the same job role, this could cause conflict between colleagues. To avoid favouritism, hiring externally would be the best option.
What Is External Recruitment?
External recruitment means bringing jobseekers from outside to inside the company. This is achieved through a few methods like advertising, recruiters, internships, employment agencies, career events, job fairs, professional associations, etc. The process of recruiting people externally welcomes fresh resources like new ideas, skills, and qualifications.
Pros of External Recruitment
Wide talent pool– External recruitment gives a company multiple choices to find suitable candidates to fill in different positions. This increased chance provides better availability of skilled and qualified employees.
Another factor to be observed from candidates recruited externally is the fact that they have unique ways of working by inputting what they’ve learned from their previous place of employment into their present job. With this act, the company is growing and advancing.
Some positions require people with some specific sets of skills that can’t be found sometimes within the organization. External recruitment helps to identify and hire professionals that are hard to find. Eg IT Professionals.
Competitive spirit – when external recruitment takes place, it revolves around a competitive spirit among the employees in the organization. Employees become more efficient and trained when healthy competition takes place between internal and external employees.
External Referrals– External recruitment allows employers to adopt different strategies including employee referrals. It involves speaking to current employees to refer qualified candidates from outside for the job. This saves time as it offers an additional layer of vetting candidates either by performing a skills test after being recommended.
Cons of External Recruitment
Some of the setbacks of adopting external recruitments include;
Increased cost- External recruitment often involves the most cost compared to internal recruitment. When companies adopt external recruitment strategies, they pay for recruiting services and membership on job platforms, social media, radio, television, and newspapers. Before using the external hiring process, try to calculate the hiring expenses and document them for your department’s budget.
Slower onboarding process– External recruitment involves lots of processes like structured training which usually takes longer because they’re less familiar with the company’s culture and policies.
External recruitment is risky sometimes because recruiting without a comprehensive background and a personality check can hinder the unknown nature of fresh candidates.
Possibility of Maladjustment– It’s very possible that your new hires may not be able to adapt to the new working environment immediately so when they fail to adjust to the working culture and policies of the company, they leave the role vacant.
