You have a position open up. You have three great internal people who could do the job.
You go to HR and say, “I’d like to approach Sally, Sowyma, and Jose about interviewing for this position.”
They respond, “Sorry! You’ll need to post the job for five days, and then we’ll send you the top 5 candidates to interview.”
You say, “But these three are all great employees, and I know they’d all do a good job. Why waste our time and candidates’ time when I know I’m going to hire one of these people?”
“Sorry! It’s policy!”
How many of you have this policy? Or a similar one. How many of you bring in candidates when the hiring manager has already made up their mind?
I asked HR and Talent Acquisition professionals the above question and got some enlightening answers. Will their explanations lead you to change your policies regarding external postings after a manager has indicated a desire to hire internally? Or will it solidify whatever you do now as the right thing?
Here are some of their responses:
Eric Ferguson, Coordinator of International Employment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said, “So, Sally, Sowyma, and Jose can be assessed by others to see if what the hiring manager alleges. The first step would be to ask them to apply. Maybe they won’t.”
Ferguson explained that not every hiring manager can do this independently, and an outside view can help ensure an accurate hire. Plus, who says the employees even want the job?
Andrea Lato, HR Business Partner at MSC Mediterranean Shipping, said the post was
“to show fairness in the process and provide support for audits to show that the position was open for a certain amount of time and only the most qualified were shared with the hiring manager to avoid any discrimination (or perception of it) by simply allowing hiring managers to hire whoever they wanted.”
She has an excellent point. If you limit recruiting to current employees and allow the hiring manager to pick all the candidates, you necessarily limit your organization. If someone accuses the company of bias later, showing that you have to know the right person to get the job isn’t a defense. By posting jobs internally and externally, you give everyone who is interested a chance to apply. It can also cut down on cronyism and other forms of favoritism.
Policies are sometimes outdated. They may have been put in place for a specific reason, but no one remembers why. Michelle Venturini, an HR Consultant and Coach in the Biotech Industry, said,
“The biggest issue I have with the scenario is that HR’s response was “it’s policy.” When that’s the first response, HR has already failed. Policy serves a purpose, but it has to be based on logic, and what supports the organization. When HR has to fall back on “it’s policy” or “it’s the law” to force employees to do what’s right, it reinforces HR’s rep for being inflexible, unaware of organizational needs and priorities, and stuck in “personnel”. If the policy can’t be justified using logic, it’s time to revisit the policy.”
While there certainly can be cases where “it’s the law” is the reason for the policy, Venturini’s point stands: if you can’t explain your policy, it’s time to examine it. Your recruiting staff should understand not only what the policies are but how to explain them to both the hiring managers and the candidates.
If no one can explain well, then it’s time to rewrite policies. Times change, laws change, and employee populations change. A policy that made perfect sense in 2010 may be utterly ridiculous in 2024. If you post all jobs externally, even when the hiring manager has already indicated a desire to promote internally, figure out why you’re doing it that way. The opposite is true as well. If you just promote without posting, is that meeting the company’s needs today?
Venturini gives a good explanation of why she supports posting jobs’
“The motivation to attract diverse candidates from outside the organization and the possibility of other, equally well qualified, internal candidates that the hiring manager doesn’t know about are reasons to consider when posting a position that already has a preferred candidate.”
You certainly cannot increase your diversity if you only look at internal candidates. And, posting the job internally allows other employees who the manager doesn’t necessarily know to throw their hats in the ring.
Remember the hiring manager’s mandate.
“The hiring manager’s mandate is to hire the best candidate possible, not the best candidate right out of the three they have today.” Shahana Banerjee, Founder and CEO of Just Human, pointed this out. There may well be better people out there. She continued,
“We can all develop tunnel vision and miss really important things that are critical for the role’s success. Looking outside is a way to breakthrough that and have a more holistic perspective.”
Tunnel vision is a serious problem–the possibilities in front of you are not generally the only possibilities. Expanding your hiring pool helps you to see more possibilities. You may come back to the original three candidates, but you may find someone better.
However, you do need to not fall prey to the fallacy of the “perfect candidate.” There are no perfect candidates and recruiters definitely do not want hiring managers in pursuit of the perfect candidate.
As Lori Golden, Talent Acquisition Consultant & Talent Tech Advisor at Rebel HR, said,
“Nope. I’ve never worked anywhere where we would have to do this. I can’t understand the purpose of a policy that would force external posting when there are viable and interested internal candidates. That’s a poor culture. To know you can’t easily move up because there’s bureaucracy in the way would be highly demotivating.”
It is difficult to retain high-quality employees if you constantly say, “Well, there might be someone better out there.” This shows that you prioritize paperwork over your employees. There must be a balance between optimizing the candidate pool and treating your current employees correctly.
While recruiting is about getting the best person for a job, it’s also about treating people with respect. When you treat candidates poorly–and bringing them in for interviews when there was no real chance of being hired is treating them poorly–you sully your company’s reputation.
While external candidates may feel like they’ve been used any time they interview and an internal candidate gets the job, when it’s not a fair competition, they have been. Consider posting the role, and if the outside applicants aren’t spectacularly better than the internal ones, go with an internal candidate.
There are advantages to promoting from within–you get a known person for whom you have real evidence of their performance, you show your other employees that this is a business that supports you through your career, and as Katrina Kibben, CEO and Founder of Three Ears Media, said, ” It’s much easier to hire more junior folks than specialists and people at the senior level.”
Whether or not you approach hiring by always posting positions externally or sometimes posting them externally depends on your business needs. But make sure you know why you are doing what you do. If you can’t explain your policies, it’s time for a revamp.
