“Why are you looking to make a change from your current position?” It’s one of the most common interview questions - and one of the most revealing. A frequent answer? Candidates like their current company but don’t see a clear path for growth. They’ve become an expert, but they are no longer challenged or learning anything new, leading them to seek that challenge elsewhere.?
While we’ve spent the last couple of months exploring skills-based hiring to deepen your external talent pool, there’s an equally powerful strategy right in front of you: internal mobility. By investing in your existing employees, you can fill your most critical positions with people who already know your business, reducing turnover and hiring costs. Here are some steps you can take to build out your internal mobility program:
- Use skills assessments to identify budding talent. Employees are always learning new skills, but without visibility, those talents may go unnoticed. Try internal coding challenges, third-party skill assessments, or repurpose external hiring tests to uncover hidden skill sets. At a minimum, you’re providing the team with feedback on the skill sets they might want to develop to make an internal career move.
- Assess your hiring history and skills wishlists. Identify the roles that are hardest to fill and determine which skills are the biggest barriers to hiring externally (see our February 2025 blog for a refresher on skills wishlists). Build training programs around those skills.
- Collaborate across departments. Partner with other managers and departments to spot employees with transferable skills who might thrive with the opportunity to learn a new skill or area of the business.
- Have career development conversations.?Have direct one-on-one conversations with your employees about their motivators, perceived strengths and areas for growth, and interests. The more you know about your employees, the easier it will be to identify learning opportunities for them to grow within your organization.
- Offer skills-based training and upskilling.?Set up opportunities for shadowing across different teams, and foster cross-training among teams. You’re helping those future leaders develop coaching and mentoring skills while adding new skills to your existing team. If you have the budget, identify online courses or in-person workshops that help employees build the competencies they need to advance.
- Recognize and reward skill development.?Encourage a culture of continuous learning by acknowledging employees who take initiative to grow their skills and contribute in new ways.?
Your employees already understand your products, clients, and culture - making them your best potential hires for critical roles. By shifting to a skills-based hiring mindset, you can strengthen your talent pipeline, increase retention, and build a more engaged workforce. If you’re ready to assess your internal mobility and talent development strategies, reach out to SymphonicHCM today.
