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More and more, internal mobility is of increasing importance for organisations, yet businesses often overlook this option in favour of the more conventional route. Having the tools available that can help promote internal recruitment and make the process of managing and tracking internal candidates simpler is the key to success.
This insight will look at some of the challenges of internal recruitment and ideas to rethink employees having easy access to opportunities for internal movement.
Is your ATS flexible to support internal recruitment?
Talent Pools
Internal talent pools are a vital component of an organisation’s talent pipeline and require a supportive culture. An outdated Applicant Tracking System may have limited talent pool functionality, which can restrict the ability of recruiters to source internal candidates proactively.
Review how you nurture and engage internal talent. If you don’t already, understand your internal skills and create and manage your hierarchy of desired skills, then use it to help match candidates to vacancies and internal hiring managers.
Internal Advertising
Internal advertising capabilities frequently hamper efforts to recruit talent internally. Outdated Applicant Tracking Systems are notoriously inflexible and may pose challenges to internal advertising. If an internal job positing option is available, it may require additional configuration.
Poor visibility of the internal job board can discourage internal applications. If an organisation does not promote and encourage internal applications, then candidates are unlikely to apply for them.
Start with your vacancy
When you create a vacancy, customise your job requisition forms to suit your internal processes, i.e. based on business unit, job type, or new / replacement roles. Do you have the ability to decide how and when a job gets advertised and set both internal and external advertising dates? For example, you might decide that a vacancy can be advertised exclusively to your internal candidates for two weeks before being opened up to the general public automatically.
You may decide hiring stages for internal candidates differs from external candidates, for example, that shortlisted internal candidates should go through only one interview with the hiring manager or hiring team. Is it time to review how flexible your approach is?
Where to advertise internal positions
Your internal recruitment process is likely to involve advertising positions through your intranet, internal jobs board or careers website. A company intranet can often be under-utilised and may have access issues when out of the office. Other smaller organisations may not have an intranet. To ensure employees have easy access to opportunities for internal movement, check how you integrate your recruitment software/ATS with your careers site. Consider widening the scope of your careers site to provide an ‘internal jobs’ button so internal candidates can view and apply for internal roles.
There are lots of clever ways to design this, so internal and external candidates can view live vacancies based on your preferences, so be sure you have the method that best suits your organisation.
Employer Brand
Internal recruiting is also great for your employer brand. It shows you value employees and support career progression. Consider using examples of internal transfers on your website using video or testimonials.
The value of internal recruitment
We recommend that you track internal hiring to understand its value to your organisation. It can offer some great advantages to your recruitment strategies such as reduced cost to hire and time to hire, quicker onboarding and improved quality of hire. Your ATS should be the hub of your recruitment analytics and be able to report on whatever you want to measure.
Here are some additional resources to explore internal recruitment further…
A short overview of recruitment analytics and how to get the best from them. Further reading in our free Recruitment Metrics Cookbook and whitepaper on Facilitating Internal Mobility.
