Recruiting in the Middle East: Internal Promotion vs External Hiring
9 minute read | Oliver Kowalski | Article | Leadership Recruiting Workforce planning
As Managing Director of Hays Middle East, I often speak with clients across the region who face the same pivotal question when building their leadership teams: Should we hire internally or look outside the business?
This decision goes beyond simply filling a vacancy. The choice between internal and external hiring can significantly influence your company culture, speed of growth, and long-term strategic success.
When I first stepped into a leadership role at Hays, one of my top priorities was to shape a high-performing team fit for future challenges. If you're a business leader aiming to strengthen your team, it’s important to pause before posting the job ad — and assess which hiring strategy aligns best with your company’s goals, values, and market context.
That starts with understanding the key differences between internal and external hiring, and the pros and cons of each, especially in the unique talent landscape of the Middle East.
Internal hiring involves filling open roles by promoting or reassigning existing employees within your organisation.
While internal candidates may still go through interviews or assessments, they already understand your business, clients, and culture — which often means they’re ready to hit the ground running.
It’s a great strategy to reward high performers, build future leaders, and retain top talent within the organisation.
External hiring refers to bringing in new talent from outside your organisation. This is often through recruitment agencies, job portals, or employee referrals. In the Middle East, where rapid growth and market diversification are common, external hiring helps companies stay competitive and agile.
While referrals can speed up the hiring process, external recruitment typically involves crafting job descriptions, screening CVs, and conducting interviews with candidates who may not yet know your brand or culture.
What sets successful businesses apart is how strategically they utilise external hiring, not just to fill roles, but to introduce fresh ideas, specialised skills, or leadership experience that doesn't yet exist within the business.
At Hays Middle East, our goal is to deliver world-class talent solutions that are both consistent and scalable despite the sector or location. As businesses across the region accelerate their growth plans and navigate local workforce regulations, building the right recruitment strategy becomes more critical than ever.
A big part of that success starts with your leadership team. One poor hiring decision can derail progress, impact morale, and create long-term business challenges. That’s why when implementing a talent roadmap, your first question should be a simple but strategic one:
Understanding the difference between internal hiring and external hiring along with the pros and cons of each is essential when you're building teams that will shape the future of your business.
In the Middle East, where the market is fast-moving and talent pools are diverse but competitive, this decision becomes even more important. Internal hiring can offer speed and cultural alignment. Meanwhile, external hiring can introduce fresh thinking, plug skill gaps, and present new opportunities.
Both methods have their place. The key is applying the right approach for the right reason.
Promoting employees who are already within your organisation gives you a major head start. They know your systems, your clients, your market — and perhaps most importantly, your company culture.
This familiarity can shorten on-boarding time and help new leaders start contributing faster — a real asset in regions like the GCC, where time-to-impact is often critical.
When you reward loyalty and performance with real progression, it sends a clear message across your business: growth is possible here. This visibility of opportunity often leads to high engagement, better retention, and stronger team culture, especially in regions where attracting skilled local talent is a priority.
When you already have visibility of internal skill sets, you can bypass the time-consuming tasks such as screening external CVs or conducting reference checks. The interview process is often shorter, and the cultural fit is already a given.
The numbers support this too: companies that focus on internal recruitment are 32% more likely to be satisfied with the performance of their new hires.
Still, this approach won’t cover every need.
Relying solely on your existing talent pool can often restrict access to new perspectives, specialist skills, and diverse experiences that external professionals naturally bring. Without introducing new thinking, organisations risk stagnation, particularly in industries where agility and innovation are key to staying competitive.
In today’s fast-moving Middle Eastern business landscape, where Dubai’s skyline evolves as quickly as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reforms—staying ahead demands more than experience and an impressive CV; it requires fresh thinking. One of the most compelling advantages of external hiring is the infusion of new ideas and implementation that can transform your organisation. We often see across sectors in the Middle East that it can be especially critical when you’re looking to address a specific skills gap or bring in expertise that isn’t readily available within your current team.
At Hays, I often advise clients to adopt a balanced approach: first explore opportunities to promote internally, identifying whether the required skill sets already exist within the business. If the internal search doesn’t meet the need, then it’s time to open the role to external candidates.
Recruiting outside of your existing team can you give your business the flexibility to bring in fresh perspectives, specialist skills, and new ideas.
New recruits from other companies, especially competitors — can challenge internal assumptions. They might bring in leaner processes, sharper commercial thinking, or more customer-centric strategies. Even if you don’t uncover new strategies, this process can reaffirm that your current approach is the most effective and efficient.
In a diverse region like the Middle East, building inclusive teams isn’t just good practice — it’s a strategic advantage.
Research shows that companies with greater gender diversity are 15% more likely to outperform less diverse peers.
Teams that mirror the diversity of your customer base often better understand local needs, enabling more tailored, effective solutions and stronger customer loyalty.
Both internal and external hiring bring unique advantages—and in my experience, the most effective strategy is a balance of the two. Internal candidates provide a deep business understanding and loyalty, while external hires offer fresh thinking and specialist skills that are essential to drive a business forward. The result of this blend? A dynamic, diverse team that’s aligned with your vision and ready to drive growth across the region.
Ready to rethink your hiring plan? Let’s talk.
