The Job Seeker Silver Medal: When “Internal Candidate” Becomes the Final Insult

“We’ve decided to proceed with the internal candidate.”

After 40+ hours of preparation.

Six rounds.

Weeks of emotional investment.

Let’s pause on that.

40 hours.

A full working week.

Unpaid. Gone.

Time that helped the employer:

 •  validate their internal candidate

 •  benchmark the market

So here’s the question:

At what point does hiring stop being evaluation…

and start becoming extraction of value from candidates?

John didn’t just miss out.

He got the silver medal in a race that was never fair.

And the feedback session?

Promised.

Still postponed.

Let’s call it.

This isn’t just frustrating.

It’s disrespectful.

So let’s ask:

 •  Why introduce internal candidates at stage five?

 •  Why run full external processes with a likely internal outcome?

 •  How often are roles just testing the market?

Because right now…

there’s no accountability.

To every hiring manager running processes like this:

How would you feel if it was you?

If you’ve experienced this…

I want to hear from you.

Drop a comment, share your story, or just say “silver medal” - let’s surface how common this really is.

TC 💛