February 2012

What role should in-house and external recruiters play in helping businesses’ internal mobility?

David Lewis, Group managing director, Integra People

Traditionally external recruiters have been used to find external candidates, rather than support clients’ internal mobility. However, it is important for all businesses to have an active internal mobility strategy that retains internal talent and maximises employees’ skills. Roles such as job analysis, person specifications, pre-selection, attracting candidates and assessing candidates are all roles that an external recruiter could play in supporting and releasing a significant amount of time for in-house HR personnel.

Anne Guerin, Head of HR, Red Letter Days

Red Letter Days B2B uses both in-house and external recruitment depending on the skill and experience required to fit the role. Externally we find that recruiting through our ‘recommend a friend’ scheme, particularly for our customer services department, works very well. We promote from within wherever possible and manage the process entirely in-house. In-house recruiters have an obligation to treat internal recruitment with the same degree of objectivity and formality as external recruitment to ensure fairness.

Flora MacDonald, Senior consultant, Right Management

The most important advice a recruiter can give a candidate is to have a career plan. Performing well will take you places but it’s important to know where you’re going. That doesn’t mean answering that cheesy interview question: ‘Where do you want to be in five years’ time?’. It’s about understanding what candidates can offer and what they want from their career. Promote their strengths, but also think what the organisation will expect from the employee. What future skills will be in demand? Careers can then be mapped as to where both the candidate and company want to go.