smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

If you are a private company there is no legislation specifically requiring you to advertise the post. However, it is good practice to do so as otherwise, you could be in breach of your equal opportunities policy, if you have one, or in breach of the law protecting certain groups against discrimination in the workplace.

These are groups such as disabled workers, ethnic minorities, temporary workers and so forth and that will depend on the circumstances.

There could be other good reasons for opening up the application process and encouraging applications from your entire workforce and even the community as a whole, such as the requirement to observe any 'equal ops' terms and conditions imposed by your partners (this often happens if you work with public sector organisations).

Of course, you will access a wider pool of candidates and what might seem like the easy option right now, may turn out to be a bad decision in the long run if you are missing out on a better qualified, more experienced candidate.

I read Jim Collins’ book, ‘Good To Great’ this year and he points out that one philosophy was shared by most of the highly successful people he interviewed and that was they would rather ‘leave a position empty than have the wrong person on the bus’. I think that has to be good advice. Here is some more step by step support from Business Link, click here.