Recruiting Your Dream Team – Internally

With a skills shortage and an all-time low unemployment rate globally, talent acquisition seems to be a top concern for every CEO. How your business stands out as a potential destination for new employees has never been more competitive.

Why should someone work for you? What are you going to offer that they can't get elsewhere?

The transactional nature of remote work, which is more and more common in today’s climate, has leaders everywhere wondering how to build their dream team.

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Over a year ago, I started a new role as the head of our global customer success department and had to build a whole team from the ground up. Of course the work is exciting. The chance to take our clients’ suggestions and deliver them a modern and intuitive experience brings me a great deal of pride. Being able to launch new features that make their lives easier is really rewarding. As we strive for a more 360 experience, we find new ways to communicate and build community in the industry research world – an added bonus.

But the thing that has made it my most gratifying role yet? Curating a team of passionate individuals who all work toward a common purpose. It wasn’t easy growing our team from one marketing support role to nearly a dozen marketing and customer success positions.

Filling 10+ roles at a time may be the norm for labor-intensive industries but it wasn’t something I had ever experienced while working at IBISWorld. Knowing that it was a new department, I wanted to stay very close to the hiring process. Our usual recruitment strategies would need to change to build the right team.

As I started looking at the exact skills we needed, I discovered that taking a hybrid approach would be the best path forward.

Approaching hiring by looking at your existing talent first can help ease the pressure of onboarding new faces. Promoting from within and upskilling people who are already a culture fit is a great way to find talent, especially in a tight job market.

Internal or external hires? What’s best?

Depending on what hiring trends look like, you might not have much choice. But a tight labor market doesn’t mean you’re stuck with second-string. Promoting, or recruiting internally, comes with perks of its own that might make a tight job market the best thing for building a highly effective team.

Some key collateral benefits that I've found while working in an organization that hires from within include:

1. Shorter time-to-performance

While some skills need to be learned when a staff member jumps into a new role, the basics of the product, the company's goals and initiatives and simply the way that things get done are already checked off. There's a lot that you don't need to train, and that allows an effective person to jump right in and start performing quickly.

2. Better staff retention

Nobody wants to feel like they are working at a dead-end job. Even those that aren't ambitious ladder climbers gain confidence by seeing their peers get promoted, and many hopefuls will work harder and be more engaged, knowing that it might open doors for them.

3. Deeper institutional knowledge

In a global business that is transforming to adopt a product-led growth strategy, sometimes there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. But as any product or project manager knows, missing just a single piece of the puzzle can be a major roadblock. Having so many people with varied knowledge of our business, systems and stakeholder needs has allowed our big projects to come together much more seamlessly, with every aspect fully covered.

What makes a good internal hire?

Watching for talent around the business has become a sport. The clever ones understand that every day is an opportunity to interview for your next job or, as a leader, to find your next hire. Your interactions around the workplace count, so always pushing your conversations a bit deeper can help you identify specific characteristics of high performers no matter what role they currently play.

Characteristics of high performers: 

1. Challenging the status quo

Have you ever found yourself talking to someone about one thing, only to move on to another subject or get three levels deeper. Why? Why? Why? Every conversation is a chance to start another. I find the highest performers ask a lot of questions and follow up questions. Curiosity around why we do things, what has historically worked (or not) and how we can be better, is a sign of forward-thinking.

2. Creative problem solving

 In the business world, creativity is more than artistic expression. Creativity can be varied ideas, resourcefulness, aspirational thinking and other lines of thinking that require imagination. When you have an entire team of creative problem solvers, one thought sparks another, and suddenly you have a whole list of solutions for each problem that are usually 10x better than your own.

People who solve problems, not just point them out, can make all the difference in driving outcomes for your team.

3. Working outside the job description

We’ve all had that employee who can’t work outside their job description. But flexibility is key when you’re looking for internal hires, or even external hires who you’re hoping will grow. While sticking to the job description can be necessary to keep everyone on track, it can also be a sign of rigidity or an inability to be agile.

4. Hard work

This one is a no brainer. And while every generation seems to have their own definition of hard work, we all know hard work when we see it.

Baby Boomers may have popularized good old-fashioned hard work, but Millennials are agile and ready to rise to the occasion – any occasion. The fast-growing Gen Z workforce has proven they can take on adversity; they’re no stranger to putting in long hours of work for a little recognition.

5. Self-starting

Self-starters are intrinsically motivated, which can be hard to gauge in an interview setting. Look for the candidates that take initiative to grow and learn. Education and certifications are freely available in many cases. Exceptional workers don’t hesitate to learn a new skill and they won’t bank on the ever-slow cultivation of experience to be their teacher.

6. Kindness

Don’t promote or hire jerks . From bullies to power trippers to gaslighters, jerks come in all shapes and sizes. While they sometimes look good on paper, their demeanor and how they engage with others – everyone from the boss to the janitor – can easily undo the benefits of work experience or natural talent.

Jerks have a way of seeding discontent among your team, making it hard for your high performers to thrive. They also have a tendency to prioritize their opinions over others, skewing team decisions and undermining the value of teamwork altogether.

A high performing team does their best work in a culture of kindness, where everyone feels empowered to share their ideas.

It’s easy for an external hire to promise these characteristics and more. But when hiring internally, you have the opportunity to observe these traits firsthand, making your chances of choosing the right fit that much better.

Managing the transfer

When done right, your decision to transfer someone into a new role should be better for both their own career growth and a clear benefit for the company overall. However, internal politics can sometimes come into play.

Respecting hierarchy and reporting lines is crucial when recruiting talent from other departments. You never want to put another team's success at risk because you've poached a keystone member, nor do you want to anger another manager by removing their opportunity to have a say in the decision or the exit process. Speaking to the right leadership and stakeholders is essential for the company's success. Follow your HR policies and procedures for the internal transfer process.

And remember, if the employee was successful and satisfied in their old role, keep a backdoor option on the table so they feel comfortable enough to take the leap. If things don't work out, and they dislike the new role or can't reach your performance expectations, you should be prepared to make an effort to rehome them. Chances are, the talent and drive that attracted you in the first place can only benefit the company as they move to another department or job title.

Training the skill

So you’ve hired the attitude – now you need to train the skill! If the role requires technical skills, make sure that you have a game plan to upskill in that area. Whether that's a robust training plan or enrollment in an online course, give them plenty of opportunities to share what they are learning. Doing so will help you confirm they’re building the right skills to adequately serve your business outcomes.

But sometimes the skills required aren't exactly technical ones with a certification waiting at the end of a course. Remember that talent can’t be taught. It’s the natural ability someone has to do something a certain way. But talent is a building block for skill, and sometimes talent can fill in for skill while your new hire is learning.

To make this work, it’s essential to look at your team’s talents and align them with their strengths. Weaknesses will always show up. But to run a high-performing team, a person's natural strengths and their potential should match the job skills required perfectly.

Avoiding pitfalls

Hiring internally comes with its perks, but there are also some unique challenges to prepare for when you promote from within. 

Bracing for the likely case of imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where someone’s sense of self-doubt regarding their work accomplishments, skills and talents causes them near-constant worry that they will be exposed as a fraud.

Employees who suffer from imposter syndrome are more prone to burnout, trying tirelessly to reach impossible goals to prove they’re legitimate.

As a leader, it’s important to remind your employees – especially those you’ve hired internally – that the skills they bring to the table are valuable, and help them skill up in areas where they don’t feel as confident. It’s also important to remind your team that it’s not about knowing the answer to every question, but having the skills to find the answer.

Fear of teaching marketable skills that take your employees elsewhere

Good leaders inspire growth. Your job, as a leader, is to make your team members the best versions of themselves. If you hold back honing their skills for fear of losing them to your competition, you’re also depriving your business of valuable time with a rising talent.

If one of your hires chooses to take their skills elsewhere, be proud that you were part of their career and helped them go further. If you’ve routinely been upskilling internal staff, then it shouldn’t be long before you find your next rising star.

You should always be succession planning and scoping out your next hire. I said it before: Finding talent around your business can be a sport, if you make it one.

Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out

We have a saying at IBISWorld that you must kiss a few frogs before finding your prince. That gives me the confidence to take chances on people around the business.

But even the most well-intentioned and well-planned promotions can fail.

Having open conversations about someone’s performance is important to ensure you’re either helping them succeed or helping them find the right next fit. Regularly reflecting on your employee’s work, and inviting them to offer their own input on their performance, gives them the power to change course when things start getting bumpy.

Taking a chance can be positive. But once you’ve identified that it’s not going to work, my advice is to move quickly. No one likes to fail. At their core, people just want to be successful. Although you might need to make a hard decision, letting go of an employee when it’s not working out gives both parties a chance at success. Moving fast will help you, them and the team move forward more productively.