4 Tips for Encouraging Internal Job Applications & Promotions and Why It’s Good for Business

While it’s traditional to look outside the company for new staff, this isn’t always helpful. It’s often seen as a snub by existing, ambitious staff who are looking to move up. When there are insufficient opportunities, or support is lacking from the company encouraging staff to apply for new positions, it leads to lower morale and higher turnover of staff who see no clear career path within the organization. Promotions are also good for employees to see, but all too often they’re based more on favoritism over talent, abilities, or working hard.

Here are 4 tips on how an employer can encourage employees to apply for jobs even if they’re advertised externally too.

Career Advice & Help with Resumes

Not every member of staff is great with their career. Often, they’ve gone from job to job. Some have ended up in a certain type of job and never meant to. They took one position offered to them and never considered whether they’d be better suited to advance in a different direction. Not every student received career advice at school or college either, which left many adrift and unclear about what they wanted to do in their lives.

Companies can provide career counseling to help explore the employee’s natural talents as evidenced in their work on the job. Where there’s the option, the company can expand or modify their role to focus more on where they’re best suited to and reduce or pass across other aspects of their previous role to other people. There’s nothing to say that jobs cannot or should not evolve.

Along with career advice, employees aren’t always the best resume builder. Some just lack the right ideas or tools to produce an effective resume. Or, they’ve never seen some good examples of one. Many companies will want to see a refreshed resume from internal applicants, so they can be compared side-by-side with external applicants’ resumes. By providing the tools and perhaps some training on effective resume design, staff aren’t held back by a lack of resume preparation skills.

Stress the Importance of Internal Advancement

It’s important to stress to employees that the company is keen to see them apply for new positions. There needs to be a clear way for employees to be notified about new positions that have officially opened with enough time for them to apply. Certainly, if an employee has been with the company for several years, they may not have a current resume instantly available (or in digital form) to submit. You don’t want a situation where employees didn’t apply because they felt there wasn’t enough time remaining to do so.

For the company, filling a new position with a current employee means their (then) vacant position must also must be filled. In some ways, it creates double work for the human resources team. However, the cost in lowered morale, absenteeism, falling performance standards, and recruitment costs to the company clearly outweigh any negatives. It’s in the company’s best interests to urge staff to apply for suitable positions when they become available.

Looking Around Them, What Do They See?

While the company’s management may say all the right things, employees are a smart bunch. When considering promotional opportunities within the company and avoiding outside competition for a position, they look around for clues. Was their team leader or department head put into the position from outside, applied for the position as an existing employee or promoted from a lower position to that one?

The status of staff within the company doesn’t lie. While there may be a hopeful new culture of internal promotions and urging applications for new positions, history may show that that wasn’t of importance to the company before. A quick scan of their department and neighboring ones while thinking about how other people came into their position makes the reality abundantly clear to staff. It also sets the tone for what possibilities employees will believe beyond what management are actually saying on the topic. If there hasn’t been a push on it in the past, it’s best for the company to acknowledge that, otherwise it will seem disingenuous.

Career Development Through Better Training

One thing that may hold employees back from applying is a lack of current marketable skills necessary for the advanced position. No one wants to make a lateral move! Providing training programs for staff to improve their skills across a broad range of disciplines is important to their ongoing development. Otherwise, the risk is that their skills get progressively out-of-date while they’re singularly focused on the tasks for their current position. When applying for a new position, that leaves them unable to qualify for it and more vulnerable in the larger job market too.

By operating courses or providing access to external ones, staff can improve themselves. Armed with new knowledge, they can take on other duties within their existing role that while not a promotion yet, provide a path to further growth. From there, other possibilities can open up. For ambitious staff who wish to apply themselves, training offered by the company offers reasons to stay and dream bigger.

For SMEs, it can be a challenge to offer effective employees the career opportunities they’re looking for. Certainly, smaller companies would do well to expand the role and increase the pay for employees who have the ability but lack an open position to apply for or be promoted into. Keeping employees happy is essential for a home-based business. A strong focus must be maintained on retaining staff through internal opportunities to prevent talent going elsewhere.

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