To Whom It May Concern:
These days, filling a position from within a company is more tempting than ever, and the advantages are many:
- Internal hires are known quantities
- Internal hires know the company culture and structure
- Internal hires know where to go to get answers
But familiarity has its own costs in that it all but eliminates the chances that your company will get an infusion of outside experience or knowledge. In other words, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. And while that’s relatively safe in the short run, companies need new ideas to grow, evolve, and thrive.
I bring this up for one simple reason: I’ve been interviewed for a number of jobs only to learn that I was under consideration mainly to satisfy a sense of fairness and due process. I appreciate every opportunity to show potential employers what experience and skills I bring to the table, but most of them chose to play it safe, choosing low risk over the potential for innovation, improvement, and a fresh perspective.
You don’t know me, and resumes and recommendations paint only part of the picture. I get that. But the chances that someone from inside your company--and often from inside the same department as the open position--will break from the status quo are slight at best. You know that.
If you’re looking for someone to keep things going the way they have been, to stay the course, hiring someone from within your company is not only a safe choice, it’s a good one.
But if you’re ready for a change, for someone with a new outlook, new ideas, and a set of experiences that can be brought to bear on the problems you face every day, I sincerely hope you’ll take a chance and consider investing some time in someone who can look at your company from the outside first.
2 comments:
Love it!
I thought you did an especially good job of laying out the logic of both kinds of choice. Choose this, get this; choose that, get that. I think you lost that balance only once. That last word sounds like a more general criticism than you prepared the reader for. This reader anyway.
I would also have like to see you propose that the ideas and experiences you bring with you might be not only different (obviously), but also better. Not just a new direction, for instance, but a better direction. The kind of direction you pointed to with your very nicely dropped in word, "thrive."
If I ever hired anyone, I would like a chance to hire someone with that good a sense of what he brings to the table.
Thanks for the feedback, Pop. Actually, you'll notice that the letter really isn't about me. It doesn't talk about MY experiences or My skills, and that's on purpose.
Although I say it's the letter I'd like to send to potential employers, it started out as a far more general piece about why you should hire someone from the outside. It just got personal later.
And you're right about the last word. It's the only judgemental thing in there and should be removed. In fact, I'm doing that right now.
-Doug
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