3 Things You Should Know About Internal Recruitment

When people think of recruitment, they think of outsourcing. They think of a company’s external reach into the Big Wide World of professionals. But this really isn’t the whole story. Internal Recruitment is just as important, and even more efficient, maximising the human resources that you’ve already got. 

So why does internal recruitment take a backseat? Because its teams are usually insufficiently trained and infrequently tended to. If your internal recruiters don’t know what they are doing, or precisely what they are doing it for, the job just won’t get done. This is easily fixed, and I’ve got a tried and tested method:

1)           Get The Knowledge

First things first: know your stuff. An internal recruiter needs to have multiple areas of expertise on the go at once. They need to know the company inside out; the employer to a tee; and the position they’re looking to fill like the back of their hand. 

But how can you, as an employer, make this happen? Introduce development sessions for your internal recruitment team. They need to know everything from the company’s history, its strengths, and its successes, right down to the specifics - its market position, its marketing angle, its financial performance. 

Invite leaders from the different sectors of your company to the meetings to present to the internal recruitment team. The best way to become an expert, is to learn from the experts themselves. Division leaders will be able to give your recruiters a nuanced understanding of exactly the type of person that will fit into that team and fill that position.

The more a recruiter knows about an organisation, the better placed they are to attract and secure the right talent. 

2)           Maintain The Knowledge

There’s no point developing this knowledge if you aren’t going to maintain it. There’s only one way to do this: regular training sessions. Training should not be sporadic, it should be consistent. Make sure that your development sessions are in the company calendar at the beginning of the year. They need to be an integral part of your company welfare plan, evenly spaced and carefully thought out. If you start early, you are primed for success. 

Just because you recruitment team is internal, doesn’t mean your teachers have to be. I find it helpful to bring in external trainers in certain sessions, in order to pinpoint specific skills and hone particular techniques. Companies tend to neglect this approach - make sure you aren’t one don’t make the same mistake.

3)           Reward The Knowledge

I often find that recruiters that look to join internal teams come from very strong sales environments, where their success has been achieved through various incentive programmes and scenes. This is an ingredient often lacking in internal recruitment teams, which proves a recipe for disaster. 

As an employer, you need to create the right working environment for your employees. This is the only way you will get the best out of the people you hire, and allow them to operate at their full potential. So, if you know that your recruiters are likely to respond well to a little competition, create it. Introduce schemes and incentives that will reward your highest achievement. Make way for peak performance. 

Recruitment is a skill, but internal recruitment is an art - it finesses the company structure, placing people in exactly the right positions. The end picture can indeed be rather beautiful. 

How do you maximise the performance of your internal recruitment team?