Briefly discuss internal recruiting and the advantages and disadvantages associated with it.

Answers will vary. Internal recruiting is the process of looking inside the organization for existing qualified employees who might be promoted to higher-level positions. This situation may not seem particularly useful for increasing the size of the workforce, but internal recruiting can play a role even in growth strategies. If an organization can fill higher-level openings with current employees who are ready to move up, it will have to fill lower-level positions from the outside later. These lower-level positions would presumably be easier and less costly to fill. Internal recruiting has several advantages. Perhaps the most important of these advantages is employees can see that there is really an opportunity for advancement when a firm relies on internal recruiting. This is likely to serve as a major source of motivation for those employees to perform their jobs as best they can. Employees recruited internally also bring the advantage of familiarity with the company—its heritage, culture, policies and procedures, strategies, and ways of doing business, making transitions to new positions easier. There are also disadvantages when internal recruiting is the only type a firm uses. This can result in stagnation and stifle creativity. It is unlikely that new ideas will be proposed for how to deal with challenges if everyone in the firm has only been familiar with one way of doing things. Also, internal recruiting creates a ripple effect in the organization. Every time a person is promoted, a new opening must be filled, and a relatively few promotions can sometimes result in a large-scale set of transfers and movements from position to position within the organization.