What’s Internal Recruiting? (And How to Properly Implement It)

Need to fill a position? Look around your office. Your next great hire might already be on payroll.  Internal recruiting is simply about giving your current team room to grow through promotions, role expansions, or fresh lateral steps.

Instead of spending time and resources looking for candidates externally, you can bring your team to new challenges. This not only reduces hiring costs, but it also sends a message: “we invest in our people”.  LinkedIn data backs this up, showing that employees who move up within a company are far more engaged and likely to stay. It’s a win-win that boosts morale and builds a fiercely loyal team.

The Biggest Advantages of Internal Recruitment 

In healthcare, recruitment is more complicated in comparison to a traditional corporate office. Promoting from within your team means you don’t lose the years of knowledge and practical experience you do when you start fresh with someone new. Most importantly, patients are more comfortable with staff they already know.

You cut costs and save time. 

If you replace a vacant role with an external hire, it can cost you up to 20% of your previous employee’s annual salary. If you promote someone from your team, you don’t only save money, but you also spend less time reviewing applications and interviewing candidates because you already know how your team works and what their strengths are.

You boost employee morale. 

Your employees don’t just want a job, they want a career. Internal promotions show that hard work and loyalty are valued and rewarded. You have the ability to create an environment where committed employees thrive and move forward. This culture of growth is one way to retain your best employees while you benefit from a stable workforce. Win-win.

You get to hire people who fit your culture. 

One of the hardest things to get right in hiring is finding someone who clicks with your team. Your employees already understand how you work in a specific way, communicate, and make decisions. Promoting internally means you preserve your culture, and it’s not just about filling vacancies.

You hire faster. 

There’s nothing more important than filling vacancies, especially for specialized and critical healthcare roles. No notice periods. No hard-to-schedule interviews. No long onboarding. Your internal hire doesn’t need to start from zero, so you’re able to spend less time on training and more on helping your employee adjust to their new responsibilities.

You keep your team’s expertise. 

How your company really works is something no external hire can replicate. Your internal team already understands the workplace dynamics and was there for the years of trial and error it took to build them.

The Disadvantages of Internal Recruiting

If you’re choosing between internal and external recruiting, there’s no universal answer. It always depends on your situation as a team leader/employer. Just like any other recruitment strategy, internal recruitment also has its own limitations.

You risk missing out on fresh ideas. 

Because your employees have been with you for a long time, the fresh perspective of a new hire can be challenging to see from your existing team. Innovations, fresh ideas, and a different point of view are what external hires can bring to the table. Growth in the workplace is found in unfamiliar environments, and external hires can bring a new way of thinking that may benefit your team and the business.

You solve one problem, but create another. 

It sometimes feels like a domino effect – filling a position internally means leaving another one vacant. Before you make any decisions, make sure you know who is going to cover their old responsibilities or have a game plan so this promotion doesn’t leave your team in chaos.

You have a smaller talent pool. 

Internal promotions also mean that your choices are limited to the people already in the building. If your current team doesn’t have the right match, it becomes a real headache, especially when you’re trying to fill a senior or highly-skilled position.

What NOT TO DO When Hiring Internally

Don’t assume that hiring internally doesn’t take effort. Here’s a look at the most common challenges and how to handle them.

• Not giving a clear set of expectations

When you do not provide a clear set of expectations to your internal candidate, you put them on a blind path of not knowing what will happen next. This is a bad approach and can usually lead to disappointment on their part.

Do not expect that they already know their new roles just because they’ve been part of the team. Instead, inform them of their new responsibilities and what you expect them to do.

• Promoting your “favorite” (even by accident) 

It’s incredibly easy to favor the people we already like and enjoy working with, but this rarely ends well for the rest of the team. To avoid the favoritism trap, focus entirely on a clear, objective assessment of what the new role actually requires.

• Relying only on who you know

Employee referrals are incredible, but leaning on them too heavily can backfire. While it’s tempting to skip a few steps for a trusted recommendation, it usually catches up with you. You should treat referred candidates with the same thorough evaluation as anyone else.

• Not having a long-term plan

It’s easy to focus so much on filling the immediate opening that you forget about the employee’s long-term needs. If someone gets promoted but realizes there’s no game plan for their development, it sends the wrong message to everyone else. The rest of the team will stop striving for those roles if they think it just leads to a dead end, resulting in a culture of people doing the bare minimum. And you don’t want that.

How to Get Internal Hiring Right

You’re already promoting your best people, so make sure you do it right. Don’t let talent go to waste.

• Don’t wait for a vacancy to look for a replacement. Start recognizing standout team members for leadership early through casual mentoring and regular check-ins.
• Set clear, measurable goals for promotions instead of going by gut feel. When everyone knows exactly what success looks like, you completely eliminate favoritism.
• Map out exactly how internal applications work and share them openly. Decide when a manager needs to know their employee is applying elsewhere so no one gets caught off guard.

Internal hiring shines when you have people eager to grow into roles that require a deep understanding of your culture. In healthcare, for instance, promoting frontline staff who already know your workflows and patient care standards inside and out just makes sense.

Of course, you don’t have to pick a side – the best approach is to look at each opening individually and choose the path that fits best.

Whether you want to smooth out these internal transitions or need help finding external talent, our team at De Vore Recruiting is here to help.