Anyone who owns a business or manages one will be aware of how crucial it is to hire the right candidates in order to continue the success of your company, and hopefully to develop business growth in the future.

When you make use of the most effective hiring practices, it can be a great way to conserve company resources, and it can help identify the candidates who have the best chance of fitting in very well with your current company culture.

When we talk about recruiting from external sources, it means seeking job candidates who do not currently work at your company but can be reached via a number of special techniques and methods. Such meetings can help qualified candidates become more familiar with your company and its business.

For instance, if you happen to be hiring for a radiology position, you could hold a job fair and advertise the radiology tech salary available to qualified candidates. There are many other ways to reach out to external candidates as well, including using social media, networking events, advertisements, and the company website. Any of these will likely produce a number of well-qualified candidates.

Advantages Of Hiring From External Sources

There are more than a few advantages to approaching the hiring of good candidates, and here are some of the strongest reasons for doing so:

• Greater diversity – if your organization is one that places a priority on diversity, hiring from external sources could be just the ticket. You’ll run into a much greater variety of perspectives, and this can sow the seeds of innovation and creativity in your business.
• Fresh perspectives – bringing in people from the outside will always add a brand-new perspective to your organization and having this different viewpoint can help to pinpoint areas where improvements are necessary. Completely new employees will have a different approach to the company than those already employed, and this can produce some very positive changes in the area where the new employee works, and ultimately in the entire company.
• Better candidate pool – by looking outside your own company, you’ll have access to a much larger candidate pool for any job openings you have. That, of course, will increase the likelihood that you’ll find a well-qualified candidate who can become successful in your organization. When you have more available candidates, you’ll also be able to be more selective, and you should be able to find someone with just the right experience and background for the job.
• Staying competitive – employees from the outside often bring in ideas and strategies from their prior work experience which might be helpful for your own company. Insights from other companies and other industries might very well be applicable to your own business practices, and they might also help you to stay abreast of current trends in the industry.
• Finding specialized candidates – you’ll be more likely to find candidates for specialized positions when you open up the candidacy to external sources, rather than limiting it to internal employees. By seeking candidates from the outside, you’ll be able to search for applicants who already have the kind of specialized training you require, and the experience you need for an open position.

Disadvantages Of Hiring Externally

Almost anything that provides you with some advantages will also carry at least a few disadvantages as well:

• Additional training – it usually requires considerably more training to hiring employees from the outside rather than internal employees who might be more familiar with your policies and procedures. This will add to the total cost of obtaining a new hire, and it’s also very likely to result in a period of decreased productivity while the new candidate is being trained. It will take a while for these new responsibilities to be learned, and to become proficient at the job. The impact of additional training can be minimized by having a really good onboarding program, and by spreading out the training over a number of weeks.
• Transition period – anytime you have a new employee in a company, there will generally be a transition period for both the new hire and the individuals working with them. This might take several weeks, because it will be necessary for the new hire to learn company practices, and to get to know their colleagues well, so they can work effectively together. You can shorten this transition period by arranging for group activities and projects, or by assigning a ‘buddy’ to the new hire to help them through the transition phase.
• Increased costs – it will undoubtedly cost you more to recruit from external sources than it would hire someone from your internal ranks. You may find yourself paying for a recruiting service or working with a recruiting agency, and it might also cost you to interview candidates from long-distance settings. It will also require your HR department to spend additional time recruiting, interviewing, and completing the necessary paperwork. You can reduce the amount of this extra cost by automating recruitment wherever possible, arranging for peer interviews to gain insights on candidates, and requiring personality tests of candidates before undergoing actual interviews. This can increase the likelihood of a new candidate fitting in well with your company culture.

Which Is Better?

The question of which hiring approach is best can only be decided once you’ve established priorities for your company. If cost is the most important factor, you’ll probably be obliged to hire from within.

However, by almost any other yardstick, you’ll probably have access to more qualified candidates by considering external sources for your open positions. Another thing to consider is that the relatively less expensive cost of internal hiring may cost you more in the long run, if you can’t find the kind of qualified candidates you really need.