Internal Hires Research Articles

Rates of Internal Hiring of Ophthalmology Faculty from their Institution of Training at Top Academic Medical Centers: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background Throughout graduate and postgraduate education, trainees need to gauge the impact of training location on future institutions of practice. Objective We assessed rates of internal hiring of ophthalmology faculty at academic institutions from their same institution of training. Methods This was a cross-sectional study. We included 1,246 clinical ophthalmology faculty at the 13 top-ranked institutions listed in the 2021 U.S. News and World Report. Primary, emeritus, adjunct, and affiliate faculty were included. Publicly available information was collected from institutional websites and other online sources. Statistical analyses were conducted using t -tests or Mann-Whitney tests, chi-squared or Fisher's exact tests, and multivariate logistic regression. The main outcome measured was internal hires, defined as faculty who had completed residency and/or fellowship training at their current institution. Results In total, 47.3% of faculty were internal hires who completed residency or fellowship at the same institution. Among externally trained faculty, 27.7% completed residency and 56.0% completed fellowship at another top 13 programs. Internal hires were more frequently fellowship-trained, had a greater number of publications, and practiced in smaller departments ( p < 0.001, p < 0.001, and p = 0.002, respectively). A greater proportion of internal hires held leadership positions ( p = 0.012). Faculty practicing in the Midwest or West and with more years since residency graduation were less likely (odds ratio [OR], 0.29, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.18-0.48; OR, 0.49, 95% CI, 0.31-0.78; OR, 0.98, 95% CI, 0.97-0.99, respectively) to be internal hires. Faculty with non-R01 National Institutes of Health funding were more likely to be internal hires (OR, 1.82, 95% CI: 1.12-2.96). Conclusions Training institution is key to determining the institution of practice. These results may be beneficial for trainees to consider when selecting a training program.

In Search of Inspiration: External Mobility and the Emergence of Technology Intrapreneurs

Recent scholarship has established several ways in which external hiring—versus filling a role with a comparable internal candidate—is detrimental to firms. Yet, organizational learning theory suggests that external hires benefit firms: by importing knowledge that is unavailable or obscured to insiders and applying it toward experimentation and risky recombination. Accordingly and consistent with studies of learning by hiring and innovation, we predict that external hires are at greater risk of intrapreneurship than internal hires. We test this prediction via a study of product managers in large technology companies. We use machine learning to operationalize intrapreneurship by comparing product manager job descriptions with the founding statements of venture-backed technology entrepreneurs. Our research design employs coarsened exact matching to balance pretreatment covariates between product managers who arrived at their roles internally versus externally. The results of our analysis indicate that externally hired product managers are substantially more intrapreneurial than observably equivalent internal hires. However, we also find that intrapreneurial product managers have a higher turnover rate, an effect that is primarily driven by external hires. This suggests that hiring for intrapreneurship may be a difficult strategy to sustain.Funding: The authors acknowledge financial support from London Business School, the National University of Singapore [Grant WBS R-313-000-128-133], and a dissertation grant from the Ewing Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1530 .

Career Mobility and Hiring Bias: Frontiers of Labor Market Research

Career Mobility and Hiring Bias: Frontiers of Labor Market Research

Strength from Within?

The objective of this study is to add to the existing literature on principal recruitment and hiring strategies by examining the turnover and retention patterns of internally recruited principals. For many hard-to-staff schools—particularly urban and rural schools—internal recruitment is considered a primary method of improving recruitment and retention. However, the relation of recruitment source to turnover has yet to be explored. Utilizing techniques including ordinary least squares and logistic regression and discrete-time hazard modeling over 17 years of administrative data from the Texas Education Agency, this study investigates (1) the personal and school characteristics of internally hired principals and (2) whether internally hired principals are more stable in their positions than externally hired principals. Results demonstrate that internal hires tend to be from more historically underrepresented groups and serve in urban schools with slightly greater proportions of students of color. Furthermore, internally hired principals are significantly less likely than external hires to turn over. However, results also demonstrate that within-school hires are more likely to turn over than within-district hires. These results suggest that internal recruitment has the potential to help stem the high rate of principal turnover but could be more widely utilized.

Variety is the Spice of Internal Hiring: How Pool Diversity Affects Post-Hire Performance and Exit

Although internal hiring is associated with a number of benefits for firms, organizations may only be able to fully capture these benefits when they create complementary person-job matches. This can be difficult, as hiring managers have incomplete information about how internal candidates will perform in a new job even within the boundaries of the firm. I introduce internal-external candidate pool heterogeneity as a source of information to aid internal hiring decisions. I argue that, by enabling hiring managers to benchmark characteristics of their internal candidates against those available in the external market, heterogeneous pools (i.e., interview pools that include both internal and external candidates) lead managers to select higher-performing internal hires than they would if they only interviewed internal candidates. I argue that interviewing external candidates is not without risk, however, as doing so also provides information to internal hires about their future internal and external mobility prospects. Using data on over 2,000 internal hires at a large, U.S.-based health services firm, I show that internal hires from heterogeneous pools are 1.43 times more likely to be rated a top-performer in their first year in the new job but also 2.01 times more likely to voluntary exit, compared to internal hires from pools containing only internal candidates. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this tradeoff for both firms and workers.

The Relationship of Residency and Fellowship Sites to Academic Faculty and Leadership Positions.

After completion of training, a physician's training institution has a lasting and meaningful impact on career trajectory. Training program influence on first job placement and academic promotions remain uncertain in academic plastic surgery. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of training and internal bias in academic plastic surgery employment and promotion. Academic plastic surgery faculty were identified through an internet search of all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited residency training programs. Faculty demographics, training background, employment, and leadership status were gathered. The analysis examined the impact of internal recruitment bias on first job employment, the impact of training history on institutional leadership promotion (chair/chief, residency director, or fellowship director), and the impact of alumni effect on academic employment. A significant proportion of recent graduates (38.6%) are practicing at the same institution as where they received residency or fellowship training. Of the 229 institutional leaders, 31.5% of chairs/chiefs, 39.6% of residency directors, and 37.5% of fellowship directors were internal hires. Overall, 34% of plastic surgery faculty in the United States share a common training program with at least 1 colleague. The top 5 programs that have the most faculty who trained at their hiring institution are Harvard (30 faculty), University of Southern California (15 faculty), University of California Los Angeles (12 faculty), University of Michigan (12 faculty), and Albert Einstein (12 faculty). Overall, 54% of plastic surgery departments employ 2 or more faculty who share a common external training program. The top 5 programs that have the most faculty who share an external training program are (1) Methodist Houston, 8 faculty who trained at Baylor; (2) Hofstra, 7 faculty who trained at New York University; (3) Stanford, 6 faculty who trained at University of California, Los Angeles; (4) Wisconsin, 5 faculty who trained at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; and (5) University of Southern California, 4 faculty who trained at New York University. The study highlights that an internal bias exists in the recruitment for first jobs and leadership promotions. However, a clear bias of internal hiring exists at several institutions. In addition, an alumni effect was identified, where some programs have a bias of hiring faculty who trained at the same external institution.

Hiring Practices of US Academic Surgery Departments—Challenges and Opportunities for More Inclusive Hiring

BackgroundTo increase workforce diversity among academic medical centers, the Association of American Medical Colleges recommends multiple inclusive strategies for evaluating and hiring candidates. Our objective was to determine (1) usual and inclusive hiring practices used among academic surgery departments and (2) the barriers to utilization of inclusive hiring practices. Materials and methodsWe used a qualitative design and conducted semistructured interviews with academic surgery department chairs (n = 19). Participants were interviewed by phone between March 2018 and June 2018 until thematic saturation was reached. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Coding for major themes was conducted independently by two investigators and discussed to consensus iteratively using thematic analysis. ResultsRather than broad and publicly available postings, many chairs reported soliciting a small number of applications from trusted networks. Although chairs report making efforts to include women or underrepresented minority candidates in interview pools, these efforts are not typically formalized. Chairs often reported an inability to secure diverse applicant pools, given the narrow specialty or clinical niche for which applications were being solicited. A major emergent theme was an assessment of a “candidate's fit” for the department. For this reason, recruiting current or former trainees was considered a safe opportunity for the department, given a perception of loyalty and trust in the internal training program for surgical preparation. ConclusionsMany chairs rely heavily on internal hires or trusted networks, which may limit both demographic and cognitive diversity. These findings highlight gaps between best inclusive hiring practices described in other industries and usual strategies for recruitment in US academic surgery.

Abstract 15: First Job and Promotion: Is There an Internal Bias in Academic Plastic Surgery Employment?

Background: Following completion of training, a physician’s training institution has a lasting impact on career trajectory. Training program influence on first job placement and academic promotions remain uncertain in academic plastic surgery. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of training and internal bias in academic plastic surgery employment and promotion. Methods: Academic plastic surgery faculty were identified through all ACGME-accredited residency training programs. Online faculty profiles and other public websites were used to gather faculty demographics. Analysis examined the impact of internal recruitment bias on first job employment, training history on institutional leadership promotion, and alumni effect on academic employment. Results: 931 academic plastic surgeons were identified. For assistant professors that graduated in the past 3 years, 38.6% practice at their training institution. Of the 229 institutional leaders, 31.5% of Chairs, 39.6% of Residency Directors, and 37.5% of Fellowship Directors were internal hires. The top 5 programs that have the most faculty who trained there are Harvard, USC, UCLA, University of Michigan and Albert Einstein. Overall, 54% of plastic surgery departments employ 2 or more faculty who share a common external training program. Those top 5 programs are Methodist Houston, Hofstra, Stanford, Wisconsin, USC. Conclusion: The study highlights that an internal bias exists in the recruitment for first jobs and leadership promotions. However, a clear bias of internal hiring exists at several institutions. In addition, an alumni effect was identified, where some programs have a bias of hiring faculty who trained at the same external institution.

Strength from Within: Internal Mobility and the Retention of High Performers

We develop and test a theoretically informed and generalizable empirical framework for evaluating the performance gap between internally and externally hired workers. First, human capital theory predicts that internal hires will be immediately more productive than external hires. Second, contextual learning predicts that internal hires will be more productive with time. Finally, theories of commitment, which are rarely applied to this literature, predict that internal advancement enhances retention among high performers (“positive retention”). Applying a general empirical framework for quantifying the relative contributions of these mechanisms to a retailer with 109,063 commissioned salespeople and their 12,931 managers, we find that the gap in our setting is primarily driven by positive retention: High performers and internal hires are less likely to quit, and crucially, high-performing internal hires are especially unlikely to quit. When high-performing internal hires do quit, they tend to cite reasons unrelated to work rather than advancement opportunities. By typically examining performance and retention in isolation, researchers and organizations may be underestimating the importance of internal advancement as a means of retaining of high performers.

In Search of Inspiration: External Hiring, Internal Mobility, and Creative Production

The practice of external hiring continues unabated, despite abundant evidence that its costs often exceed its returns. In view of this, we consider whether external hiring provides value to firms that prior research has not captured: Namely, greater opportunity for intrapreneurship. Consistent with organizational learning theory, learning-by-hiring, and studies of innovation, we predict that external hires are at greater risk of intrapreneurship than internal hires. We test this prediction via a study of product managers in large technology companies. We use machine learning to operationalize intrapreneurship by comparing product manager job descriptions to the founding statements of venture-backed technology entrepreneurs. Our research design employs coarsened exact matching to balance pre-treatment covariates between product managers who arrived at their roles internally versus externally. The results of our analysis indicate that externally-hired product managers are substantially more intrapreneurial than observably equivalent internal hires. However, and consistent with prior research, we find that intrapreneurial product managers have a higher turnover rate, an effect that is amplified for intrapreneurial external hires. This suggests that hiring for intrapreneurship may be a difficult strategy to sustain.

Inside Jobs: The Employment of Internal and Domestic Hires in High-skill and High-pay Positions

Individuals transition across organizational boundaries (internal vs. external hires) and/or national boundaries (domestic vs. foreign residency hires) for employment opportunities. Building upon t...

Strength from Within: Internal Mobility and the Retention of High Performers

We develop and test a theoretically informed and generalizable empirical framework for evaluating the performance gap between internally and externally hired workers. First, human capital theory predicts that internal hires will be immediately more productive than external hires. Second, contextual learning predicts that internal hires will be more productive with time. Finally, theories of commitment, which are rarely applied to this literature, predict that internal advancement enhances retention among high performers (“positive retention”). Applying a general empirical framework for quantifying the relative contributions of these mechanisms to a retailer with 109,063 commissioned salespeople and their 12,931 managers, we find that the gap in our setting is primarily driven by positive retention: high performers and internal hires are less likely to quit, and crucially, high performing internal hires are especially unlikely to quit. When high performing internal hires do quit, they tend to cite reasons unrelated to work rather than advancement opportunities. By typically examining performance and retention in isolation, researchers and organizations may be underestimating the importance of internal advancement as a means of retaining of high performers.

Posting and Slotting: How Hiring Processes Shape the Quality of Hire and Compensation in Internal Labor Markets

Recent research highlights the benefits of internal hiring––filling a job by hiring a worker currently employed by the organization––and more than half of jobs are filled that way. Yet we know surprisingly little about the processes that facilitate the movement of workers across jobs within firms. I address this gap by first detailing the portfolio of internal hiring processes employed by large organizations, focusing on posting and slotting. Posting is a predominantly market-based process in which a manager posts an open job and invites interested candidates to apply, whereas slotting is a predominantly relational process in which a manager personally identifies a preferred candidate and “slots” him or her into an open job. I then examine how key differences between posting and slotting shape two outcomes of importance to firms and workers: quality of hire and compensation. My analysis of 8,107 internal hires at a large U.S. health-services firm reveals that outcomes for internal candidates depend, in part, on the nature of the process used to facilitate the movement from one job to the next; compared with slotted employees, workers who enter a job through posting have higher performance ratings, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to exit the firm. My findings suggest that the posting process improves the quality of hires by expanding the pool of potential candidates at the recruiting stage and by disciplining the information managers use to evaluate candidates at the selection stage. As well, internal candidates hired through posting are more likely to initiate salary negotiations and negotiate more competitively, resulting in higher initial salaries.

Learning to let go: Social influence, learning, and the abandonment of corporate venture capital practices

Research summary: This study examines the abandonment of organizational practices. We argue that firm choices in implementing practices affect how firms experience a practice and their subsequent likelihood of abandonment. We focus on utilization of the practice and staffing (i.e. career backgrounds of managers), as two important implementation choices that firms make. The findings demonstrate that practice utilization and staffing choices not only affect abandonment likelihood directly but also condition firms' susceptibility to pressures to abandon when social referents do. Our study contributes to diffusion research by examining practice abandonment—a relatively unexplored area in diffusion research—and by incorporating specific aspects of firms' post‐adoption choices into diffusion theory.Managerial summary: When do firms shut down practices? Prior research has shown that firms learn from the actions of other firms, both adopting and abandoning practices when their peers do. But unlike adoption decisions, abandonment decisions need to account for firms' own experiences with the practice. We study the abandonment of corporate venture capital (CVC) practices in the U.S. IT industry, which has experienced waves of adoption and abandonment. We find that firms that make more CVC investments are less likely to abandon the practice, and are less likely to learn vicariously from other firms' abandonment decisions, such that they are less likely to exit CVC when other firms do. Staffing choices also matter: hiring former venture capitalists makes firms less likely to abandon CVC practices, while hiring internally makes abandonment more likely. Plus, staffing choices affect how firms learn from the environment, as CVC managers pay attention to and learn more from the actions of firms that match their work backgrounds; i.e., firms that staff CVC units with former venture capitalists are more likely to follow exit decisions of VC firms, while those that staff with internal hires are more likely to follow their industry peers. Our results suggest that firms wanting to retain CVC practices should think carefully about the implementation choices they make, as they may be inadvertently sowing seeds of abandonment. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

In or Out: Differences between Internal and External Hires on Individual- and Unit-Level Outcomes

Many organizations face the decision of whether to fill higher-level positions by promoting employees from within the organization or hiring external candidates. Despite this, surprisingly little e...

The Overconfidence Of Boards And The Increase In CEO Pay Over Time

This paper is based on Robert Shillers view that hiring of external CEOs is excessive due to boards overconfidence and causes reduced firm performance. External hire selections provide all CEOs with bargaining power. I show excessive external hiring provides an alternative explanation (excessive bargaining power) for the upward trend in CEO pay since 1945 that is largely consistent with the observed facts. A survey of the direct evidence on external hires performance provides uniform support for Shillers view after accounting for research supporting alternative views that only includes CEOs who survive. After adjusting for survival bias, the survey results consistently suggest that firms predominantly realize greater performance from internal promotion, all else equal. Overall, this papers findings increase support for succession through internal executive promotion, and suggest that institutional investors can expect greater bargaining power and wealth by advocating for internal hires more often.

The Overconfidence of Boards and the Increase in CEO Pay over Time

This paper is based on Robert Shiller’s view that hiring of external CEOs is excessive due to boards’ overconfidence and causes reduced firm performance. External hire selections provide all CEOs with bargaining power. I show excessive external hiring provides an alternative explanation (excessive bargaining power) for the upward trend in CEO pay since 1945 that is largely consistent with the observed facts. A survey of the direct evidence on external hires’ performance provides uniform support for Shiller’s view after accounting for research supporting alternative views that only includes CEOs who survive. After adjusting for survival bias, the survey results consistently suggest that firms predominantly realize greater performance from internal promotion, all else equal. Overall, this paper’s findings increase support for succession through internal executive promotion, and suggest that institutional investors can expect greater bargaining power and wealth by advocating for internal hires more often.

Helping new executives to hit the ground running

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an interview with Mark Byford. Design/methodology/approach – This study discusses findings from a global survey of 500 executives about how well their needs are met by organizations. Findings – This study outlines the importance of providing support for both external and internal hires so that they may integrate into their new roles as quickly as possible. Practical implications – This study provides insight for human resource and learning and development professionals on how to ensure that new hires receive the support they need to adapt quickly to a new role or working environment.

Chairs and Chiefs of Plastic Surgery

There is no more important decision an academic Plastic Surgery Department or Division can make than naming a chair or chief. Externally recruited leadership brings fresh perspectives and connections. Critics, however, argue that they lack the in-depth knowledge of the institution's culture and history that may be needed to succeed. The ability and skill of an internal candidate is already known and can increase the odds of that person's success in the leadership position. Finally, external recruitment can be a more costly process. Ultimately, the decision is really a litmus test for a Plastic Surgery program. The authors aim to evaluate factors influencing ascent in Plastic Surgery leadership, including training history, internal promotion, and external recruiting. All Plastic Surgery residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education were noted (n = 71). Academic departmental chairs or divisional chiefs of these residency programs were identified at the time of study design (October 1, 2011). For each chair or chief, gender, training history, and faculty appointment immediately prior to the current leadership position was recorded. There were 71 academic chairs or chiefs of Plastic Surgery residency programs at the time of data collection. The majority (62%) had done fellowship training following Plastic Surgery residency. Fellowships included hand (43%), craniofacial (29%), microsurgery (18%), and other types (10%). The majority (73%) of leaders were internal hires (P < 0.01), having faculty appointments at their institutions prior to promotion. However, only a fraction (22%) of these internal hires had done Plastic Surgery residency or fellowship training at that institution (P < 0.01). External recruits consisted of 27% of all 71 academic hires (P < 0.01). Many factors influence the decision to recruit leadership from internally or to hire an external candidate. These include the time to fill the position, program culture, candidate experience, and cost. These results support that the insider/outsider hire decision is ultimately one of duality. That dichotomy is achieved with an emphasis on internal promotion, but always with an eye towards the advantages of bringing in external talent as a valuable contribution to increase organizational success.

Internal Versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers

Internal versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers BY LINLIN MA June 12, 2013 Committee Chair: VIKAS AGARWAL Major Academic Unit: DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE I use a unique dataset of 1,808 mutual fund manager replacements to study the determinants and the subsequent impact of the choice between hiring the successor from within (internal hire) and outside (external hire) the fund family. I find that fund families prefer to replace their top performers with internal hires and bottom performers with external hires. External hires demonstrate superior ability to turn around bottom performing funds, but exhibit inferior ability to maintain the record of top performing funds. I find no cross-sectional difference in post-replacement performance between internal and external successors, indicating fund families, in general, make their replacement decisions optimally. I do, however, find that funds that deviate from the optimal decision have subsequent sub-par performance. Overall, the evidence suggests that portfolio managers play a pivotal role in determining mutual fund performance. Internal versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers