What is Lateral Hiring – Meaning, Tips & Best Practices

What is Lateral Hiring?

Lateral hiring is the process of employing fresh talent who already work in a similar job at another business. It is used for job positions that are generally harder to fill, such as senior executive roles. Lateral Hiring is most typically used for positions that demand a highly specialized set of skills, experience, or knowledge.

Lateral hiring is a smart approach to recruitment that can provide important benefits for organizations aspiring to establish diverse and high-performing teams. When companies consider candidates from outside the traditional talent pool, they have access to an extraordinary blend of unique abilities, perspectives, and backgrounds needed to fuel creativity and growth. 

Fresh Perspective: 

Lateral hires bring lateral thinking, innovative theory, and varied experience from previous jobs and companies. A new surge of fresh ideas can shatter the status quo, dissipate stagnation, and innovate the enterprise.

Fill Skill Gaps: 

It is possible that the organization does not have a certain skill or does not retain the necessary expertise. Employing through lateral hiring can help companies avert the skill gap challenge as it gives you professionals who have the requisite knowledge and experience, subsequently making your team competent.

Accelerate Growth: 

Hiring seasoned professionals at the top level can assist the organization in scaling its rapid growth trajectory. They usually have the most valuable network, expertise in the industry, and leadership skills that can help prioritize, accelerate, and execute strategic initiatives and business expansion plans.

Enhance Diversity: 

In organizational lateral hiring, diversity is not just about demographics but also about different thoughts, experiences, and backgrounds. Employing different people is the foundation of creativity, making decisions, and serving customers better.

Competitive Advantage: 

The present-day business world is characterized by a high tempo of competition. This is why every business must strive to stay ahead of its competitors. Sideways hires may bring with them competitive intelligence, market knowledge, and best practices from their previous jobs, and that is an important factor in how the organization can compete.

Cultural Refresh: 

By attracting new talent through lateral hiring, organizations can revitalize the culture by introducing new values, work styles, and attitudes. It will help to improve morale, increase engagement, and thus renew the working environment.

Leadership Development: 

In many cases, cross-hire executives come with a track record of leadership. Companies can enrich their leadership by introducing seasoned outsiders who can mentor, guide, and give internal talent exposure to new leadership styles. This will then create a pipeline of future leaders.

Capacity Building: 

Lateral hiring enhances the organization’s capacity by introducing more resources and special skills. This makes it possible for the company to undertake new projects, break into new markets, or handle the most complex tasks that would not be within its reach if it had to rely on its current staff.

Fast-track Innovation: 

Companies typically link lateral hires with a proven track record of innovation and problem solving. Through this incorporation, companies can apply these experts’ experience to the creation of new products, process improvements, and technological breakthroughs at a faster rate.

Integration Issues: 

One of the main challenges is that the new member should be able to fit into the existing team and the organizational culture. Lateral recruits might face resistance from the current employees; they might struggle to adjust to new techniques and systems; or they might experience difficulties in developing connections with the new hires.

Cultural Fit: 

The employer cannot easily verify that the new hire will be the perfect fit for the organization and that they will uphold the values, culture and norms. Conflict, morale deterioration and decreased productivity result from cultural mismatches, whereas lateral hire is already part of the company ecosystem, reducing the risk of a cultural mismatch.

High Expectations: 

Due to their prior experience and skills, lateral hires typically face high expectations upon onboarding. However, inadequate management of these expectations can lead to dissatisfaction in the hiring process and frustration within the organization, particularly if the hired individual fails to demonstrate immediate positive results.

Internal Resentment: 

The current staff may experience a sense of being neglected or worthless if there is a new person, coming from outside, hired in a position of authority or strategy. This may lead to resentment, loss of motivation, and even employee attrition of the workforce if not handled on time and proactively by the management.

Knowledge Transfer: 

While lateral hires from previous jobs or other organizations bring valuable knowledge to the team, sharing this knowledge with the rest of the team can be challenging. As the organization fails to possess the proper documentation, training, or mentoring programs, there is a possibility that it may not fully utilize the new hire’s abilities and experiences.

Retention Risk: 

This could lead to lower employee loyalty among lateral hires, which in the future can cause a high turnover rate of new employees, especially if they are not satisfied with their role or feel that they have no connection with the company culture. Therefore, it is critical to have more and more initiatives to keep your talent in your organization for the long term.

Cost Considerations: 

Side hiring can be costly, involving a recruiter fee, relocation expenses, and possibly higher compensation requirements than those expected for internal promotions. Organizations should be cautious in their decision to implement lateral hiring and take into consideration the costs and benefits of this approach to ensure a good return on their investments.

Overlooking Internal Talent: 

Organizations may neglect to groom or even promote internal talent to fill vacant positions among the external hires. This situation could potentially discourage the remaining employees and delay the succession planning process.

Mismatched Expectations: 

Dissatisfaction and turnover result from a misalignment between the organization’s expectations of the job’s function and the candidate’s opinions of the job role, duties, and career advancement. Effective communication is essential, as is knowing what to anticipate at each step of the hiring process.

Onboarding Challenges: 

Effective onboarding and support during the transition process are crucial for the successful integration of lateral hires into the organization. On the other hand, inefficient onboarding processes or no support from bosses or colleagues can cause the new recruit to not be able to do his role effectively.

Identify Talent Needs: 

To do that, start by defining the internal positions or positions in the organization that need to be filled. This should be done by the company’s strategic direction, desired growth plan, and identified skills deficiency.

Job Analysis and Description: 

Conduct a job analysis that identifies the basic requirements, essential competencies, educational background, and work experience needed for a specific job post. With this analysis, you can now come up with a stellar job description that covers all the responsibilities and qualifications of the particular job.

Formulate a Recruitment Strategy: 

Given information from the job analysis and workforce needs, determine the right recruitment plan. This can be done using the following; websites for job listing, interview as a service platforms like InterviewVector professional connections, career fares, social media, and recruiting firms, among others.

Candidate Sourcing: 

Conduct active sourcing by always approaching potential candidates using resources like networking, referral and passive candidate sourcing. Use the ATS, resume screening, and different talent acquisition tools for the search.

Screening and Initial Assessment: 

Resumes, cover letters, and portfolios should be scanned to have a list of candidates who match the job requirements. Screen through telephone or video call interviews to assess the qualifications and experience of the candidates for the positions.

Interview:

Further, arrange and prepare comprehensive interviews with the candidates to understand their aptitudes, work profiles, competencies and corporate values. It can be a process of several short interviews with the heads of departments and team members, partners, and clients.

Assessment and Selection: 

Schedule an evaluation, case or work sample as a method of determining the right skills for the position. Use feedback from interviewers and other stakeholders to make the right decisions.

Reference Checks: 

Conduct comprehensive, reference checks to verify the level of the qualifications and the experience of the qualified candidates in past job responsibilities. Contacting the candidates’ professional references is not all; ask for help from your personal network.

Onboarding Planning: 

Create a very detailed onboarding program so the new staff member’s onboarding process is as easy as possible. Onboarding sessions, training programs, introductions to key team members, and access to every resource the candidate will need should be included.

Onboarding and Integration:

Implementing this onboarding plan for the new hire in such a way that it can support the new job and organization effectively. You should try to arrange a mentor or buddy for the onboarding process.

Performance Management and Feedback: 

Set up concrete performance criteria and goals for the new employee and give them feedback, and regular support to help them succeed in the position. 

Retention and Engagement Strategies: 

Create tactics to increase lateral hiring, retention and engagement (e.g. career development plans, recognition programs, line of sight checks to see how you’re personally developing employees’ careers if they’re not already doing so).