When it comes to filling open positions, recruiting from within your own employee base might just be your best bet.

Remember how, in Some Kind of Wonderful, Eric Stoltz’s Keith relentlessly pursues the attractive, but ever elusive Amanda, played by Lea Thompson, only to discover that (spoiler alert!) his true love was actually Mary Stewart Masterson’s Watts, who’d been by his side all along?

There’s actually a lesson there for recruiters and hiring managers: sometimes the very thing you’re looking for in terms of new hires is actually right in front of you. In other words, next time you’re searching for candidates to fill an open position, don’t overlook the perfectly good candidates who may just be right in front of you: your current employees.  You might not immediately consider your current employees – the Watts’ of the candidate world, if you will – when considering who your next hire is going to be, but if you look at the benefits of recruiting from your current employee base, you might find that they’re ultimately your perfect match.

Internal recruiting: Driving down costs while increasing productivity
Consider the time you invest when you bring in new hires, onboarding them and familiarizing them with the organizational culture. Current employees are already familiar with the culture of the organization and daily business operations. While that employee might need some training to supplement the skills needed for his or her new role, the costs of bringing in a new employee will likely still outweigh the costs of training a current one for a new role. Newly promoted employees can also assist in training their replacements while transitioning to their new role within a company, further driving onboarding and training costs for other hires.

Another beneficial side effect of internal recruiting is the potential to positively affect morale and productivity. Hiring from within your own company proves to other employees that you recognize their hard work, trust them to take on other responsibilities, and are truly providing the career advancement opportunities workers value so much. As a result, they’ll be driven to work that much harder to take advantage of those opportunities themselves.

As the labor market gets more competitive and candidates with the specialized skills you need become harder to find, employers are placing higher importance on the practice of hiring employees based on cultural fit and then, once they’re on board, providing them with the skills they need for the role. After all, you can teach a smart, eager employee certain technical skills in a relatively short amount of time, but you can’t necessarily teach values, work ethic and other soft skills that are just as crucial to the growth of the organization.

Prepare your company – and your employees – for future growth
Whether you currently have an open position or not, and regardless of whether you plan to hire internally when you do, it’s always a good idea to set the groundwork for the possibility of promoting from within in the future.

By investing in training and educational opportunities for employees, you not only make them more productive in their current roles, but you’re providing a foundation that enables them to move up and take on bigger challenges in the future. Take a cue from employers like AT&T, Esurance and 24 Hour Fitness, all of whom discuss how and why the prioritize employee training their companies in the video below.