When you’re expanding your workforce, it’s common to struggle with the decision of promoting and hiring from within, versus looking for external candidates. This can be a critical decision for certain kinds of roles.

Hiring from within gives you people who are familiar with the culture of your company, who know key processes, and already have important relationships. Often you’ll save a whole lot of time and money in the hiring process, which you can then apply to give this person some kind of bonus incentive.

Hiring from the outside brings in new skills and perspectives, and sometimes minimizes disruption that might happen by leaving “holes” when you shift people around. Depending on the attractiveness of the job, it’s possible for internal candidates to feel blocked from applying.

So two tradeoffs you have to consider is how much diversity you want to introduce by bringing in external talent, and how attractive a job position is to employees who might see it as a promotion or productive lateral move.

Another factor to incorporate is the expectation of salary and benefits. With external candidates, you’re much more at the expectations of the general labor market, for better or worse. Internal candidates often look more at whether the salary would be higher or the same as their current job, although increasingly savvy employees are also aware of the general market value of their skills.

Your company culture is a complex mixture of attractive, sticky, and motivating. Or the reverse. It’s great to take true stock of what your culture is and what it’s perceived to be from the outside. Beware that what YOU believe the culture is can often be quite different from its true nature!

Before you just blast a job posting out on a job board, make sure you spend some good time working through all these factors. It’ll be the healthiest thing not only for the person who fills the position, but for everyone else as well.