← Applying business knowledge to a critical problem

Losing key personnel, and recruitment options

A distinct problem type: an experienced staff member leaves (often for a competitor), and the business must choose how to fill the gap.

The shape of a key-personnel question

• FACTORS BEHIND A RESIGNATION: usually TWO genuinely different causes — a push factor (frustration with an internal change of direction, feeling unconsulted) and a pull factor (a competitor offering more control, better pay, or values that better match the employee's own).
• SHORT-TERM IMPACT OF THE LOSS: lost specialist knowledge and experience, disruption to ongoing projects, and the cost/time of recruiting and training a replacement.
• RECRUITMENT OPTION 1 — PROMOTE FROM WITHIN: retains institutional knowledge and rewards loyalty, but the promoted person may lack the departing employee's specific specialist experience, and creates a new gap one level down.
• RECRUITMENT OPTION 2 — RECRUIT EXTERNALLY: brings fresh ideas, skills and perspective the business may currently lack, but costs more, takes longer, and the new hire needs time to learn the business's own culture and systems.

Worked example Justifying internal promotion to honour a change in tikanga A business is changing its tikanga (way of doing business) to emphasise innovation and customer-based solutions after losing its long-serving design head to a competitor with those same values. Justify, with two reasons, whether promoting from within or recruiting externally would better honour this change. OPTION CHOSEN — RECRUIT EXTERNALLY: bring in someone from OUTSIDE who already embodies the NEW tikanga the business wants to adopt. REASON 1: an existing internal candidate is likely shaped by the OLD way of doing things, making it harder for them to genuinely lead a shift toward a different set of values and priorities. REASON 2: an external hire with a track record in the new approach (innovative design, customer-based solutions) brings PROVEN capability in exactly the direction the business wants to move, rather than requiring someone to learn a new approach on the job. ACKNOWLEDGE THE ALTERNATIVE: internal promotion would be faster and preserve continuity, but risks perpetuating the very approach the business is trying to move away from. ✓ The strongest answers tie the recruitment choice EXPLICITLY back to the specific tikanga or value shift named in the scenario — not a generic "external hires bring fresh ideas" with no link to what change is actually being honoured. ✕

Discussing recruitment options with no link to the SPECIFIC reason the role needs filling

A generic comparison of promoting-from-within versus external recruitment, with no connection to the SPECIFIC reason this business needs to fill this role (e.g. honouring a change in tikanga, or replacing a very particular specialist skill), misses what the question is actually testing — always tie the choice back to the named context.

Option	Advantage	Disadvantage
Promote from within	Retains institutional knowledge; rewards loyalty	May lack specific specialist experience; creates a new gap
Recruit externally	Fresh ideas/skills; proven capability in a new direction	Costs more, takes longer; needs time to learn culture/systems

Practice for this standard covers the whole topic — flashcards and quiz.