Which sources of recruitment should you use in your hiring process?
Gabrielle DeMers
Customer Success Manager @ Dover
March 18, 2024
•
3 min
Internal recruitment is hiring someone from within your own organization. This includes promotions, transfers and rehires.
Types of internal recruitment
There are a couple types of internal recruitment:
1. Promotions
Promotions are the most common type of internal recruitment. High-performing employees are great candidates for internal promotion.
2. Transfer
Transferring an employee from one company location to another is way to fill an open position with present employees.
3. Role changes
When employees outgrow their current roles, they may wish to try something new. This internal recruitment source can often be a lateral move within an organization.
4. Contract to full time
Contract or part-time workers are great candidates for internal hiring.
4 benefits of internal recruitment
Internal recruitment can be mutually beneficial for employers and employees. Here are some key advantages of internal recruiting:
1. Cost-savings
Hiring externally can be expensive. Whether your company has a recruiting team, uses recruitment agencies, or posts on job boards, hiring externally can be expensive. When you hire internally, your upfront hiring costs are minimal.
2. Shorter hiring process
According to LinkedIn, in 2023 the average time to hire across all industries was 44 days. Some industries like tech have a longer average time to hire since they are more competitive. When you promote from within, the hiring process is often shorter since the hiring team is often familiar with the candidate's work and may not need to conduct recruiter phone screens or reference checks.
3. Shorter onboarding process
Onboarding and training new employees is a time-consuming process for both the new employee and those current employees who are training the new hire. While existing employees will need to learn a different position, they will already familiar with company policies and procedures.
4. A morale booster for existing employees
When employees have the opportunity to learn and grow, they are more likely motivated to stay at the company. This is not only morale-boosting, but can lead to higher retention rates.
4 challenges of internal recruitment
There are also some key downsides of internal recruiting:
1. Don't have talent internally
Companies may not have the talent already in their organization with the skillset required for the new role.
2. Reduces morale for employees who are not promoted
Internal recruitment can potentially reduce the morale for those employees who are not selected or considered for open positions.
3. Less innovation
If a company only promotes internally and does not hire externally, it can promote homogeneity. Sometimes new employees bring a fresh prospective to an organization.
4. Don't have on-the-job training
A company may not have the capability or resources to train someone who doesn't already have experience in a particular role.
According to LinkedIn, "70 % of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren’t actively job searching, and the remaining 30% are active job seekers." Therefore, it's in your best interest to search for prospective employees from multiple sources.
External sources or recruitment are any methods or channels of recruitment outside of the company. This includes both active candidates (job seekers who are applying to job postings) and passive candidates (external candidates who are not actively looking for a job but who may be interested).
For external recruitment, there are tradeoffs for each source, so it’s important to have a multi-channel strategy.
Types of external recruitment
There are many external recruitment sources for companies to leverage. Here are some common recruiting sources:
1. Sourcing
Sourcing tools, like Dover's Sourcing Autopilot, can be used to find and contact passive qualified candidates at a volume much higher than a human recruiter.
2. Recruiting agencies
Typically used for enterprise or executive searches, agencies typically charge a commission fee, placement fee and/or agency fee for placements.
3. Dover
Dover offers recruiting solutions for your company including sourcing, scheduling and interviewing to accelerate your hiring process. You can accelerate your hiring at a fraction of the cost of a recruiting agency or internal recruiter.
4. Careers page on company website
Advertise open positions on your website by posting a job description. A careers page provides a great opportunity to showcase your company culture and employer brand to potential employees. Don't have a Careers Page? You can create a Careers Page with Dover's free Applicant Tracking System.
5. Online job boards
Posting your job openings on popular job boards like LinkedIn, Indeed will attract interested job candidates for your vacant positions. With Dover, you can post to over 60 online job boards and Dover's free ATS will allow you to filter through the volume of applicants by ranking them based on the criteria for the role.
6. Social media
Sharing that you're hiring on social media sites like LinkedIn is a great way to attract suitable candidates from your network. Dover has partnered with X Hiring so that you can promote your role for free on X (Twitter).
7. Schools, colleges, or universities
Job fairs held at universities provide an opportunity to connect with potential candidates in-person who are actively looking for a job. Students are also great candidates for entry-level positions or internships.
8. Professional organizations (labor unions, associations)
Advertising your open roles with professional organizations can help target job candidates in relevant industries.
3 benefits of external recruitment
When weighing the pros and cons of external recruiting, many of the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of the internal sources discussed above. For example, while external recruiting may be more costly, you’ll have a larger candidate pool of potential candidates.
The advantages of external recruiting are:
1. A larger candidate pool
As mentioned above, a study by LinkedIn concludes that 70% of talent is passive, so by utilizing external recruiting, you'll tap into the largest pool of candidates.
2. Opportunity for new ideas and innovation
Hiring outside of your organization and its networks can help you approach old problems in creative ways, or uncover blindspots you weren't aware of before
3. More diversity
67% of job seekers say diversity is an important factor when considering a company. External recruitment is the best way to ensure that your pool of talent has a broad spectrum of backgrounds and demographics. Check out our blog - Impact hiring: 3 things to consider when prioritizing diversity.
3 challenges of external recruitment
On the other hand, external recruitment can be more costly and time-consuming than internal sources. Additionally, external recruiting can lead to a lack of a culture fit.
Some disadvantages to consider are:
1. Cost
External recruitment is typically more expensive than internal sources, due to the cost of advertising, recruiting software, and recruiting agencies.
2. Internal frustration:
If current team members are in consideration for roles or could be in the running for your position, it can potentially cause tension if there isn't a conversation about levels, experience, and career paths before you enlist external recruiting methods.
3. Mismatch in qualifications:
External recruitment methods for candidates, such as job boards, can result in lots of applications with bloated resumes or mismatched qualifications.
An effective approach to hiring new employees is to encourage existing employees to refer people from their professional and personal networks as part of an employee referral program. Typically, whe. employee referrals get the job, the employee who referred them gets a reward or bonus.
At Dover, we recommend encouraging your team to submit referrals on a regular cadence (quarterly) and helping them through the logistics of finding and reaching out to their network.
For referrals, it’s important to keep in mind that, although referrals are an inexpensive option and often offer high quality candidates, the pool of potential candidates is relatively small and will be exhausted quickly, especially at a small company.
Diversify your sources of recruitment
In a crowded hiring market, it's best to minimize risk and the ebbs and flows by diversifying your sources as much as possible. Your recruitment strategy should be to optimize each channel of recruitment (internal recruitment sources, external recruitment sources, and referrals) to get the most value for the cost.
Offering a employee referral program and bonus structure is an inexpensive way to attract a highly qualified talent pool from your company's existing network.
For an internal source, you can create an up-skilling program for a department with lots of junior employees who will likely be promoted, retaining employees at a low cost and saving resources.
For external sources, you can post on multiple job boards and use sourcing tools like Dover's Sourcing Autopilot to send email outreach to get new talent and ideas through the door.
