The One Simple Tactic Recruiters Can Use to Find Great Candidates — and Boost Internal Mobility

Sometimes the answer you’ve been looking for is right under your nose. 

That’s true when it comes to talent. As LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky recently said: “Your next best employee is most likely your current employee.” And while 75% of talent acquisition pros acknowledge the growing importance of internal recruiting, new LinkedIn behavioral data shows that most recruiters are still overlooking a simple and effective way to source internal candidates. 

That tactic, right under your proverbial nose? Searching for candidates at your own company on LinkedIn — that is, literally entering your own employer into the company search filter within LinkedIn Recruiter to find employees with the skills or potential to fill an open role. 

Only 38% of recruiters who actively search for candidates on LinkedIn have used the platform to search for candidates at their own company over the last 12 months.

If you’re working at a larger company, you might already have an in-house system that allows you to find employees with the skills for your open positions. Even so, you can augment your search by sourcing internal candidates on LinkedIn itself — it could surface employees overlooked by your in-house system, or add more color to the internal talent pool you’re already considering. 

This simple tactic is associated with higher internal mobility rates

This new research also reveals a strong correlation between searching for internal candidates on LinkedIn and actually attaining higher rates of internal mobility. While fewer than 40% of all active recruiters have filtered LinkedIn search results by their own company, the situation is very different at the companies that achieve the greatest internal mobility rates. 

Among the top 10% of companies with the highest internal mobility, nearly half (48%) of recruiters filtered for internal candidates within the last 12 months. Compare that to the 10% of companies with the lowest internal mobility rates, where just 28% had recently searched for internal candidates.

In other words: At companies with great internal mobility, almost twice as many recruiters are using LinkedIn to identify internal candidates, compared with companies with poor internal mobility. 

At the top companies, an average of roughly 2% of all searches for candidates on LinkedIn Recruiter were internal searches (that is, searches for candidates at their own company). At the bottom companies, just 0.56% of all searches for candidates were internal, on average.

So, the companies with high internal mobility are nearly four times more likely to search for internal candidates on LinkedIn, compared with companies with the low internal mobility.

Recruiters may be leading the charge on internal mobility

When comparing the top companies against the bottom, in terms of internal mobility rates, the data shows a strong correlation between recruiter search activity and actual internal mobility. Surprisingly, perhaps, there was not a similar correlation between a company’s actual internal mobility rate and the share of employees who applied for internal roles. 

Looking across both “high-mobility” and “low-mobility” companies, the share of employees who apply for internal roles appears to be rather stable: It hovers between 1.1% and 1.3% of employees, regardless of whether your actual internal mobility is high or low. 

This suggests that internal mobility is much more related to recruiter activity (in terms of internal searches) than it is to employee interest (in terms of internal applicants). 

For recruiting professionals, that spells out an encouraging message: You have the ability to drive internal mobility — and one important early step is as simple as searching on LinkedIn.

As LinkedIn’s previous research has revealed, internal mobility is related to higher retention. That said, recruiters may need to take the initiative here because employees in virtually all countries say they’re more likely to find a new position outside their current company.  

It’s important to remember that this only reflects activity on the LinkedIn platform: employees may have other ways to apply for internal roles, whether through their intranet or by starting a conversation with the hiring manager in person. Still, even if only interpreted directionally, this is a strong indication that recruiters have more power to drive internal mobility than they might realize. 

Final thoughts

The lesson for recruiters is clear: To improve internal mobility, use the company filter on LinkedIn to source employees for your open roles. There’s a strong association between doing so and actually achieving much higher rates of internal mobility. 

Even organizations that are advanced enough to have a strong internal job board and skills taxonomy can augment their internal hiring process with this simple tactic. 

It’s true when it comes to talent, and it’s true when it comes to sourcing internal talent: Sometimes the answer you’ve been looking for is right under your nose.

*This post was coauthored by Adriana Zurbano.

Methodology

This analysis is based on aggregated and anonymized global LinkedIn data. Internal mobility rates are determined by the share of all job transitions that begin and stay within the same company. The data for this analysis spans 12 months, from April 2022 through March 2023. Our company analysis excluded those with fewer than 100 recruiter searches and job applications in the last 12 months, as well as companies with virtually no internal mobility.