Internal recruiting: four tips

Personnel management is like customer acquisition: it is often many times more difficult to find new ones than to keep your current one. Yet in business we often focus mainly on this growth: how do I get new customers and the best employees? Sometimes, though, those best new hires are people you've hired for a long time.

Entire recruitment departments can be busy looking for new employees full-time. However, it is quite possible that the greatest talents are already out there somewhere in your company. But how do you, as an entrepreneur, gain insight into the development of your employees? How do you ensure that they continue to grow? And how do you keep them on board at all? We give you four practical tips to be able to recruit internally in the long run.

Tip 1: Keep an eye on your back door

Ask the average entrepreneur why employees leave their company and most will think it's because employees have found jobs elsewhere with higher pay or better conditions. However, research among people who switch jobs shows otherwise. Growth and development opportunities are by far the most important reason in the Netherlands for people to quit their job and start working elsewhere.

Does this also apply to employees who quit their jobs with you? How do you find out? You could start by conducting exit interviews with all your leaving employees. Not to blame them or to give them a hard time, but to find out in a pleasant conversation what the main motivation was to apply for a job elsewhere. The answers will eventually tell you what you might have done to keep these people on board.

Tip 2: Make development and growth important

There will be few entrepreneurs who hinder their employees in their development. You will not say 'no' if one of your employees wants to participate in a training. But do you really encourage it? Is development and development an important part of the employment of your staff?

Many people need a big stick to get started with their development. If there is none, they will come to a standstill and in the long run they will become unhappy and therefore less productive. For example, by making an annual development budget available and periodically discussing future plans and career opportunities, you can help employees enormously. Evolving employees will not only get better at their current job, but may eventually become suitable for other positions within your company.

Own staff become frustrated when they see that external entrants get better working conditions.

Tip 3: Own staff first

Little is more frustrating for employees than external entrants who immediately receive better working conditions than themselves. You've been committed to a company for years, always doing your best, and here comes an outsider who gets more pay from day one. So challenge your recruitment staff: own staff first. Can that important vacancy really not be filled with someone we already have in our own ranks? What is more important: experience as a manager elsewhere, or thorough knowledge of your own company here?

Tip 4: Be transparent about your company mission and embrace it

The above only works if your employees feel that they are part of a company with a thoughtful mission. A mission they also believe in and want to contribute to. What is your company's right to exist? Why do your people get out of bed every day to stand up for the cause?

On to good employer branding Doing this – and applying this not only externally, but also mainly internally – allows your staff to embrace your company mission. They will then be less inclined to leave your company – after all, the mission is not yet complete – and also want to develop further to increase their contribution. In the long run you will notice that you spend less and less time looking for suitable personnel. So you have more and more time for actually running your business.

Read this page to learn more about (online) recruitment.