But, "A stitch in time" and all that...
Too much informal recruitment can rot your company from the inside out, preventing you hiring those folks who'll take your business further and narking off your current employees in the process.
Here are just four of the reasons you need to wave "bye bye" to informal recruitment - and now!
Thinking about hiring a mate, or someone whose name's been pinged to you by another employee?
Don't just chuck a contract at them - chances are your decision will be based on avoiding offending a friend or colleague, rather than on the unique talents of the prospective recruit.
This could land you with a dud hire who's difficult to shift for fear of upsetting people. That can leave a whole lotta commercial potential left untapped for months, or even years.
Ever watched someone be given something you had to work super-hard for? Hurts, doesn't it?
Well, just imagine how your employees will feel when they see their new colleague swan in without having had to go through the usual motions, like:
People in offices talk, so everyone will know how easy this new recruit had it, whether you like it or not. This will put a serious dent in your team morale and pull the plug on productivity.
You might be popular. But, no-one's SO popular that they'll always know someone who'd be a good fit for a vacancy.
Whether you have a person in mind, or are scanning your entire professional network for someone to slot in, you're really just scratching the surface. You might even discover a little subconscious recruitment bias.
By only making your vacancy accessible to a select group of VIPs, you could well be missing out on hundreds of people who'd be a better fit, bring in new skills and push your business further.
Candidate pools give recruiters a bank of quality talent to call on, helping you fast track the hiring process, avoid doing work twice and keep tabs on the skills that're in demand in your industry.
Whenever you're hiring, you should be adding all those folks who just missed the mark to your candidate pool to keep tabs on in future.
If you don't open the floor to everyone, you won't just miss out on potentially better applicants now, you'll also miss the opportunity of finding awesome staff for the years ahead.
Need we say more? It's time to bin informal recruitment and boost your business' chances of landing those high-quality hires.