In the past 30 days, I’ve spoken to a dozen Talent Acquisition leaders across a bunch of industries and markets. There was one common theme, “Holy crap, our req load just doubled or tripled almost overnight!”

The conversation always went to how and what can we do to get more candidates faster!

One, out of twelve, actually had the insight to comment, “we have to make sure our internal employees, first have the option to move into some of these roles, if they desire”.

She mentioned they branded this movement within their organizations – #InternalsFirst! 

The reality is, and she knows this as well, it’s not one or the other, it’s both, but I love the focus on internals as we come out of the pandemic and start increasing our hiring. Yes, we need to fill these openings, but also, yes, we need to engage our internal talent, or we’ll have a much larger problem in the second half of 2021.

We give our internal talent a discount on value. “Oh, yeah, Jenny, she’s good, but we know her and her capabilities, what about Mary, the new shiny, candidate we know nothing about!? She might be 8% better than Jenny!”

Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself! Mary isn’t better, she’s just new and shiny. Mary has that new employee smell! Jenny lost her new employee smell and now she just smells like everyone else.

As we come out of the pandemic, our internal talent is starving to be engaged. To be noticed. The worse thing you can do, when hiring picks up is to forget about them. To make them feel like an afterthought.

#InternalsFirst