In our experience, an organisation looking for an internal recruiter will always look more favourable at candidates with internal experience. Most agency recruiters lack the lateral skills required, through no fault of their own, as most only have exposure to a small part of the complete hiring cycle. The only real exception to this role is when a client demands a particularly rare skill set normally found among the niche agency population.

In the current economic climate, most internal recruitment functions are beginning to experience a rise in the volume of roles. This is stretching their available resources to the limit so when they do have budget to expand the team an experienced internal recruiter who can hit the floor running is the lower-risk option.

Rather than focus on the negatives and list reasons why organisations should make these hires, my advice to all agency recruiters is to initially work for an RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) company. RPOs find it hard to attract experienced recruiters as most internal recruiters view moving from an internal to RPO role as a step backwards. To overcome this, RPOs have to take talent from the agency sector offering valuable exposure in an environment where all roles have to be filled, hiring managers need coaching and mentoring throughout the interview process and where true selection techniques are engaged to screen candidate suitability.

Once experience has been gained within the RPO sector you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the response you get from a large percentage of the internal resourcing hiring community. Most don’t differentiate between RPO and actual internal experience.

As with anything there are always exceptions to the rule, but hopefully this may help.
Jeremy Thornton, director of Oasis Search and co-founder of the Direct Resourcing Think Tank