Recognizing and rewarding your existing team members with promotions for getting you through this difficult period is certainly one means of filling some of your open positions and will have the benefit of helping you retain those who have been committed to your company's success.  However, at some point, those positions will need to be backfilled along with the aforementioned new positions. As you can see, this will quickly take us to the two following areas.
 
THE CURRENTLY EMPLOYED:
Many organizations have indicated they are only interested in talking to people who maintained employment through the recession.   Clearly they are interested in hiring the best.  This is always the goal to have in mind when hiring since it gives you the best talent to help move your company forward into prosperity.  To accomplish this will take some serious recruiting on your part, however.   These individuals have succeeded in taking their organization through some pretty rough waters and their efforts should be rewarded (Wall Street is already talking about going back to the bonus days).  This means you must have an excellent value proposition to attract this high caliber talent.  It can be done, but the question is: are you ready to do it?  It will probably mean not only exceeding their present situation in terms of position and salary, but exceeding both enough to beat the counter-offer they will receive.  That's right--no company is going to want to lose a top performer when coming out of a recession.  Be prepared to bring your "A" game and your checkbook.
 
In the event you are not successful in that approach, you still have opportunities to hire very talented staff.  Consider your own situation when you were going through your cost cutting process and some of the people you had to let go.  Many were doing a very good job – but the health of the company dictated the necessary cuts.  You were not alone.  Today there are a significant number of very qualified professionals available who can bring value to your organization.   Discounting those individuals simply because they are not currently employed could prove to be a very short sighted hiring practice.  This brings us to the third group – targeting those who are not working.
 
THE UNEMPLOYED:
They are readily available, anxious to get back to work and can add value very quickly to your organization.  However, many companies proposing this approach are doing so because they also believe they can acquire these people at below market rates.  Many will be successful and will probably think they are buying some loyalty because they were kind enough to give someone in need a job.  There will be a percentage of those people where this technique will actually work.  However, this can pose a long term problem.
 
As we all know, and history has proven, we will recover.  When that occurs, many who were "low balled" will actively start pursuing opportunities that are more in line with their previous salaries.  This will happen.  If you decide to exercise this approach, you will find people who will come to work for you because they need to.  How do you plan to retain them if they perform well?  When the market starts to improve, it would be prudent to evaluate the performance of those individuals who are working at below market rates. If in fact they are meeting or exceeding expectations, you need to bring their salaries in line with market values.  The advantage of this approach is that you will likely retain this trained and established employee and eliminate the cost of lost productivity while conducting a new search. Think of it this way: you can either bring the proven employee up to market value OR train a new person and still end up paying what the new market cost is going to be anyway. The decision is yours.
 
We have tried to cover some of the methods you can use to build your team as the economy improves. We are also available to discuss the pros and cons of these approaches, but, the ultimate question you will need to answer is this: What is your strategy?