Hiring is never easy. Hiring for senior-level positions adds another dimension of complexity to your search. One solution to consider? Promoting from within. This strategy brings the combined advantages of the ability to choose a known entity for a high-impact senior-level role and the less challenging task of filling the lower-level position left vacant by the promotion. The key to making this option successful is continually filling your talent pipeline with qualified, ready-to-promote employees.
Promoting From Within Is a Smart Hiring Strategy
At a time when open positions at any level are difficult to fill, creative approaches to recruiting challenges have never been more essential. High-level roles can take months to fill, and most of them cannot be left vacant long before having a significant negative impact on the organization. While outside candidates bring benefits such as new perspectives and competitive intelligence, choosing to promote from within offers additional advantages that are hard to beat. Here’s how to start your senior-level recruiting process.
Analyze the Requirements of the Position
Before you commit to conducting an internal or external search for a senior-level position, clarify the qualifications an ideal candidate will possess. Begin with the job description. Don’t just dust off the list of requirements and duties that were used the last time the role was filled. Businesses change, and so do jobs at every level. It may be necessary to add or subtract duties or areas of responsibility. For example, a manager or director-level hire in IT may have been expected to focus on cloud computing or app development. Perhaps now, your top priority for that position might be cybersecurity or safely and effectively incorporating remote workers into your network. An old job description is no way to hire for a new position in a constantly changing business environment. Update the skills required of candidates to reflect current needs.
Build Your Decision-Making Team
Hiring can go wrong when the expectations of the decision-makers and candidates don’t match. Select a decision-making team with a deep understanding of the role. Consider what problems the new hire will be tasked with solving. What impact will they be expected to make? What are the responsibilities of the job and hard and soft skills that will make them stand out? What obstacles will they face in the role? Discuss the search with incumbents in lateral roles and those to whom the new hire will report. Seek their input on your finalists for the role – internal or external.
Advantages of Promoting From Within For Senior-Level Positions
Promotions Boost Employee Morale and Engagement
When you promote from within, it demonstrates to all employees that you follow through on professional development plans and career path promises. Seeing their coworkers succeed in the company can motivate them to continue their own development efforts. It can encourage them to advance their careers within the organization as well, rather than seek outside opportunities to take the next step up the career ladder. When talent is in demand, anything that improves retention is a bonus.
Employees Value Advancement Opportunities
Lack of opportunity for advancement is one of the most commonly cited reasons for an employee to leave a company. Surveys have indicated that as many as 63 percent of employees list this as a reason they would seek new employment. Employees who are not supported and encouraged often see responsibility for professional development as lying entirely on their shoulders rather than viewing their employer as a partner in their advancement. One company conducted an analysis of their investment in tuition assistance that showed an ROI of 129 percent over four years. A recent survey of more than 2,000 employees indicated those with access to professional development opportunities are 15% more engaged and have 34% higher retention. Confidence that the organization sees them as worthy of investing in can also boost motivation and performance.
Internal Candidates Start with an Insider’s View of the Company
You won’t have to explain the company culture or history to a promoted candidate. Their hands-on experience means they understand the organization’s strengths and weaknesses. They know the players and the hidden influencers. Hiring from within aids in retaining institutional knowledge. Current employees interested in advancing internally bring a deep understanding of your core values and a commitment to work in concert with them. Organizational culture is led and promoted by management. Ensuring the right people are in place in senior-level positions can maintain a positive culture and spread it throughout their subordinates.
Promotion From Within Shortens Ramp-Up Time
With a promoted candidate, the training process is quicker, and you can skip most of the onboarding. In high-impact positions, this can be a significant advantage for the organization overall. Unlike outside candidates who need time to become comfortable with the company, get to know their peers, superiors, and direct reports, internal candidates will have a head start. Their inside knowledge of how things work can include software, competitive position and unwritten rules about how different departments interact. It could take years for an external candidate to catch onto this level of nuance. This internal candidate advantage can save the company time and money in training while improving productivity and effectiveness.
Hiring From Within Reduces Recruiting Costs
Hiring from within can reduce or eliminate some of the largest time and money expenses associated with senior-level recruiting, including advertising the opening, identifying qualified candidates, interviewing the finalists, and vetting the top choice or two. You may even have the added expense of hiring executive headhunters if you are unsuccessful recruiting outside talent on your own. High-level positions typically take longer to fill. Vacancies can depress revenue, lead to missed deadlines and leave to employee uncertainty if people are unsure who to report to in the interim. Requiring current employees to pick up the slack longer can lead to resentment or cause them to fall behind. The quicker a senior-level position can be filled, the lower the cost and negative impact on morale and productivity.
Internal Promotions Reduce the Risk of Poor Fit
An internal candidate is already immersed in company culture, unlike an outside candidate who may not fit in. Commonly, an inside candidate can be attracted to a position for a much lower compensation package than a candidate coming from the outside. Outside hires can take three years to perform as well as internal hires in the same job, while internal hires take seven years to earn as much as outside hires are paid.
External Candidates are Expensive to Onboard
It can be costly to bring on external employees and those increased expenses can extend long beyond the hire. Onboarding and training take more time to accomplish. External recruits can take as long as two years to be fully effective on the job. Most organizations can’t afford to go that long with an employee who’s not 100% ramped up – especially when they are paying a premium. External hires are paid as much as 18% more than internal promotions, while their performance is usually worse for the first two years.
Outside Candidates May Never Perform to Expectations
Despite any amount of due diligence, there’s no way of knowing for sure how well an outside candidate will fit into the organization. A bad fit can lead to turnover, either because the new hire never feels comfortable in the company and leaves by choice, or because they are unable to gain traction in the role and are eventually let go. Either outcome is bad for everyone involved. External hires at any level are more likely to be laid off or fired within the first two years of employment; the time frame for senior-level positions can be even shorter.
Build a Successful Talent Pipeline
If you were to take a survey of your employees, it’s likely you would find many of them interested in moving up the career ladder. However, they may not be aware of the best route to take to achieve their goals. Talk to employees about their interests. Create a management training or mentorship program. When identifying candidates for these programs, take care to avoid implicit bias that leads to a management team with no diversity. Ensure your management talent bench has a DE&I component.
Identify Employees Who Want to be Promoted
While many employees are happy to continue in a specific role without moving up the ladder, others quickly self-reveal an interest in upward mobility. Pay attention and engage with your employees, and you’ll see the ones eager to pitch in when needed and take on new responsibilities beyond their job description. They are likely to accept the training opportunities you offer and put the time into understanding and excelling in what you’ve given them. By the same token, don’t pressure employees to take a promotion if they are reluctant. It might not be a good time for them to take on additional responsibilities for various personal and professional reasons. Open the door, but don’t push them through it.
Do You Need Assistance in Senior-Level Recruiting? Contact PrideStaff!
While internal promotions are the ideal solution to filling senior-level positions, it’s not always possible to achieve this goal. If the company is growing quickly, you may have no one ready for promotion. If the organization seems stuck, you may need an outside perspective. If you’re creating a new business unit, there might not be anyone inside the company qualified to take on the role. If internal promotions are off the table for any reason, you need an expert in identifying and attracting senior-level talent quickly without sacrificing quality. This is where G.A. Rogers, a division of PrideStaff North Dallas excels. Located in Dallas, TX, G.A. Rogers is a staffing agency and executive search recruiter with national reach and a reputation for excellence built over more than 40 years in the business. Contact us today to learn how our proven search process has stood the test of time and how we can help you recruit the talent you need.
