When a high level opportunity opens up in a company, one of your first thoughts may be whether you should promote from within the company or look for outside talent. There may be no reason to agonize over your options. Do you have a current employee who is qualified to do the job? If so, promote them. Simple! But if you’re not sure you have someone ready and waiting, here are some things to thing about:
The Pros and Cons of Inside Talent
If you’re a good manager, you’ve likely already been cultivating great traits in your workforce. Someone that can be trained to do a job with more responsibility is smart, has a good work ethic, and leadership skills, which are all traits that you most likely looked for when hiring your current staff. Promoting from inside makes for an easier transition for the rest of your employees, and it boosts morale, because they recognize they may have an opportunity to be promoted, too. But if your corporate culture is stagnating, promoting from within will only make the problem worse. Don’t forget, too that employees tend to be promoted until they are in a job that they can’t succeed in. If you promote an employee to a role they can’t fill, it affects your entire company negatively.
The Pros and Cons of Outside Talent
New people bring new ideas, which in turn creates new business and growth. Someone new to your organization can reassess everything from workflow to organizational strategy and revitalize your entire company. On the other hand, new employees must build relationships from scratch, which is a challenge if their role is a leadership position. In addition, there can be a sense of distrust around a new employee, and assessing someone’s fit within your corporate culture is one of the hardest things to do. Training can also be expensive, although if you invest in the right person, it will pay off beyond the amount that you put in.
For help finding great new talent, or with managing your current talent, get in touch with a recruiting specialist at Contemporary Staffing. We have people who work specifically with different industries and we can determine what’s best for your company.