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“Do more with less.” You’re sure to hear this phrase whenever uncertain economic conditions arise. Amid the current economic and hiring downturn, there’s a growing pressure in the talent community to maximize resources. However, the one opportunity that far too many talent teams brush aside is optimizing internal mobility.
The majority of employers (38%) say that they don’t market job opportunities to their own employees. It’s time to change that. Internal recruiting leverages existing talent to mold your hiring team into an agile unit, able to withstand anything that the landscape throws at them. It’s the epitome of “doing more with less.”
Better yet, with the lower cost of internal candidates, hiring from within allows you to fill crucial talent gaps when economic conditions make external recruiting less feasible.
Here are six ways to enhance your internal mobility strategy and stay afloat while recruiting in a potential recession.
1. Get Leadership on Board
Uplifting internal mobility is an undertaking that talent acquisition can’t do alone. Getting firm buy-in from leadership is crucial to an internal mobility strategy’s success. This buy-in allows for a culture of mobility to truly flourish throughout an organization.
When presenting this strategy to leadership, remember that leadership speaks in dollar signs and metrics. Ensure that you’re armed with solid statistics on why hiring internal candidates is a smart move for the company’s bottom line—especially considering current economic and hiring conditions.
Once you secure their endorsement, it’s time for leadership to lay the groundwork for your new mobility culture. They should inform employees that they are welcome to search for new career opportunities internally, and encourage managers to vocalize this same sentiment to their direct reports.
2. Emphasize Learning and Development
Don’t expect for employees to apply to internal positions right out the gate. You need to do a bit of extra work to prepare employees for potential internal moves, and that means uplifting learning and development (L&D).
Making L&D accessible to employees allows them to gain the training and skills that are needed for specific internal roles that they desire. L&D can take a wide variety of forms, but mentorships and job shadowing are both great ways to prepare employees for any role changes.
3. Support Your Organization’s Managers
Seventy percent of talent acquisition professionals say that the biggest obstacle to internal recruiting is a manager who doesn’t want to let go of talent. We get it; it’s logical to not want to lose your best employees.
However, an employee switching roles shouldn’t be viewed as a loss for a manager, but a win for a company. It’s crucial to educate managers on the value of internal mobility, such as improved cross-department collaboration and higher retention.
Not all managers are resistant to internal mobility; some managers simply don’t know how to contribute to such an initiative. That’s why managers need sufficient support and training so that they know how to uplift their direct reports and prepare them for career changes.
4. Help Define Career Paths for Employees
So, you have employees who are interested in making internal moves, but they’re not sure which options are available to them—or how to move internally to begin with. That’s where the importance of defining career paths comes in.
Fostering transparency surrounding career paths makes internal mobility all the more accessible. To kick-start the process of defining career paths, empower managers to work alongside their direct reports and carve out custom paths and goals.
5. Shed Light on Lateral Mobility
A common misconception of internal mobility is that it always means climbing up the career ladder. However, that’s just not the case. Internal mobility encompasses both vertical and lateral moves. It’s important to clarify career opportunities for both.
Lateral mobility is commonly referred to as “role-to-role mobility,” where an employee moves to a new internal position with little (if any) changes to their compensation or career level.
There’s just as much value in lateral mobility as there is in vertical mobility. Encouraging lateral moves enhances collaboration across departments and keeps employees continuously engaged in your organization’s opportunities.
6. Elevate Internal Mobility With Tech
No matter if you’re hiring internally or externally, candidates should experience an efficient and meaningful hiring process. The best way to live up to a candidate’s expectations and deliver a noteworthy hiring experience is by enlisting the help of your tech stack. Ever heard of GoodTime Hire?
Hire harnesses Candidate Relationship Intelligence to automate coordination, build relationships during interviews, and provide actionable insights to continuously improve your connections with candidates.
Schedule a demo to learn more about how Hire can transform your talent acquisition process.
