When you apply for the next higher manager job, don't get it and end up being managed by your rivals, it takes much reflection to suck it up.
Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
81–90 of 230 posts
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#82I think hiring externally is often over valued in many organizations today. There is a number of reasons for this, but one is that if you hire someone external they are more under your control than an internal hire who already has ideas of how things should work and relationships and therefore has their own amount of political clout. A new hire has no reputation to lean on so must be a bit more cautious at first. Ano…
And in the longer term- it builds stronger incentives for employees. Most devs, if HN is any indication, believe that jumping ship every 1-2 years is the best way to move up. But if you have senior devs who were juniors at the same company just a few years ago, you'll probably be more likely to stick around.
I'd argue the same goes for technical leadership that were hired in originally as senior/staff/principal. The bar for breaking into a technical leadership position at every company I've worked for seems impossibly high, while they've been more than willing to hire that from the outside. That doesn't just go for myself, but the colleagues I've seen leave as a result of not being able to break that barrier.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#83I think hiring externally is often over valued in many organizations today. There is a number of reasons for this, but one is that if you hire someone external they are more under your control than an internal hire who already has ideas of how things should work and relationships and therefore has their own amount of political clout. A new hire has no reputation to lean on so must be a bit more cautious at first. Ano…
I'd argue the biggest hurdle isn't even what you like or dislike, it's that when someone gets used to you being in a given position, that's all they see in you. I actually had that happen at one point in my career, kept getting an "I don't think you're ready". When I finally told them I'm leaving if it doesn't happen, they did the right thing. Afterwards I got a lot of "I'm sorry I pushed back, I couldn't see you in…
I'm absolutely convinced this happens -- with roles, with capabilities, with salary. It's got to be related to normalcy bias and other anchoring phenomenon. Probably less than half-conscious, too.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#84[deleted]
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#85I think hiring externally is often over valued in many organizations today. There is a number of reasons for this, but one is that if you hire someone external they are more under your control than an internal hire who already has ideas of how things should work and relationships and therefore has their own amount of political clout. A new hire has no reputation to lean on so must be a bit more cautious at first. Ano…
An excessive bias to internal hires, though, runs the risk of organizational ossification.
I've spent most of my career in consulting organizations, and sometimes our clients have been orgs with a high percentage of "lifer" employees for whatever reason. (Often, this is because the employer is one of only a few good, white-collar employers in an area, which is its own cost.)
Orgs with insufficient new blood get stuck. They think of the Company Way as the only way, and policy begins to replace thought pretty much across the board.
One example, early in my career -- before I went to consulting, even -- was a place I worked for 2 years in the mid-90s. They were a 100% VAX shop much later than the rest of the industry, and were known to pretty much hire new technical people only right of of college. As a result, they ended up technically isolated from the mainstream.
Once they realized that they were spending WAY more on homegrown solutions than they would on a commercial DB, it was really too late -- new grads didn't want to work on a dying platform, and the veterans had no experience working on anything other than the homegrown stuff.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#86After reading the article one thing that struck me was the " internal candidates who were rejected after interviewing with the hiring manager were half as likely to exit as those rejected earlier in the process." Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company I've applied for multiple higher level positions after 5 years and multiple high marks on my reviews and not gotten 1 recruiter call. I did get with one recruiter and…
> Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company
Isn't that the Fortune 10?
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the biggest reason is that the company already knows the person is good at their current job, and already have the experience and knowledge to do the job well with no more training. If you move the internal person and hire someone to backfill, you have two people who need to be trained and who might not be a good fit at for the particular job.
> If you move the internal person and hire someone to backfill, you have two people who need to be trained and who might not be a good fit at for the particular job. I have 1 opening at my company. Someone internally transfers to fill it. I still have 1 opening at my company. Alternatively, someone externally joins and fills it, and the person who was unhappy and looking to transfer leaves shortly after instead for a…
I get it, and don’t think it is a smart long term choice to not hire internally.
I was just trying to think about reasons a company might choose not to. How much training you have to do for the internal transfer is going to depend on how similar the old and new job are.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#88This just happened with me, applied for a few internal positions I was told I was qualified for, then later found out they had changed their minds. No other opportunity for growth internally otherwise, so my only option is to look outside of the company.
Yeah, as I wrote in another comment this happened to me too. Admittedly it was only a single position so my situation may not have been quite as bad, but it was a little frustrating not to get any response even though the role remained unfilled. I ended up leaving for an external position.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#89Required reading for every technical leader: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/
> Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve been raving about it for a year, but would you like to come visit Our Company? No commitment. Just coffee.” ... Your shields are officially down.
> Your shields drop the moment you let a glimpse of a potential different future into your mind. It seems like a unconsidered off-the-cuff thought sans consequence, but the thought opens you to possibilities that did not exist the moment before the thought existed.
> Every moment as a leader is an opportunity to either strengthen or weaken shields. Every single moment.
As a CTO of a young company, I start many mornings thinking about my team's shields. Am I asking them to focus on projects or parts of the stack they don't find interesting, or being less proactive than I should be in unblocking their needs? And most importantly, am I staying true to our values and providing them the transparency they need? Because if we get to the point where the OP article is, where team members want to find a different team, there is no other tech team they can transfer to, so their shields being down becomes a critical vulnerability! There's a balance, of course, and some weeks are just too chaotic to be perfect at this, but I try as much as I can. I like to think that this is also the type of environment that makes people the most creative they can be - it's a win-win for everyone.
Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit
#90I think hiring externally is often over valued in many organizations today. There is a number of reasons for this, but one is that if you hire someone external they are more under your control than an internal hire who already has ideas of how things should work and relationships and therefore has their own amount of political clout. A new hire has no reputation to lean on so must be a bit more cautious at first. Ano…
And in the longer term- it builds stronger incentives for employees. Most devs, if HN is any indication, believe that jumping ship every 1-2 years is the best way to move up. But if you have senior devs who were juniors at the same company just a few years ago, you'll probably be more likely to stick around.
> Most devs, if HN is any indication, believe that jumping ship every 1-2 years is the best way to move up.
It's not just developers. The old model of companies rewarding loyalty and actively investing in furthering their employees' skills has declined across the board, and it's no coincidence that the timeline correlates with the timeline of the demise of unions and collective wage/employment condition agreements.