Even prior to the pandemic, more and more companies were seeing the value in recruiting internally. According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020 Report, 73 percent of hiring professionals say internal recruiting is becoming increasingly important. Additionally, LinkedIn found that the frequency of hiring internally — e.g., promotions, transfers, and lateral moves — has increased by 10 percent over the last five years.
The report also highlights exactly why internal recruiting has become so critical to employers in recent time: 81 percent of surveyed talent professionals said it improves retention, 69 percent said it can accelerate new hire productivity, and 63 percent said it makes the hiring process move faster.
It’s worth digging a bit deeper into these responses to understand what the increased use of internal hiring means for recruiters — and why internal hiring can be especially valuable when it comes to hunting for sales talent:
1. Internal Recruiting Accelerates the Hiring Process
Seeking internal candidates for your open sales positions is a great way to decrease the time it takes to fill the role. Nearly every step in the process is much faster when you prioritize an internal search.
For example, candidates are easier to find and engage when your talent pool consists of your current workforce, and you already have built-in references you can consult to assess fit quickly and accurately. With internal candidates, you can easily schedule interviews without all the typical back and forth, and if you decide the candidate is the right person for the job, they already went through all the necessary background checks when you hired them the first time.
As a bonus, once you offer the role to a candidate, the hiring manager can work out a transition plan with the employee’s current manager. That way, they may not have to even wait the standard two weeks to start training for their new role.
2. Internal Recruiting Accelerates New Hire Productivity
When you make an external hire, you have to onboard the candidate to both the job and the company. That means they have to acclimate not only to their new responsibilities, but also to the company’s processes, procedures, and culture. With internal hires, you’re skipping half of that learning curve. Internal hires already understand the company’s product, mission, and target clients, and more importantly, they are also well practiced in applying this knowledge to their previous role.
With an internal hire, the hiring manager can focus on training the person solely on the job itself. Because the new hire only needs to complete roughly half of a typical onboarding program, they can start adding value (or sales) to the team in roughly half the time it would take an external hire to do the same...