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Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

news.cornell.edu

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Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#61

Post by cushychicken »

This is me!!!

I applied for a product manager job in March of 2020 as a transition from engineering.

The hiring committee approved hiring me on March 9, 2020. They were gonna make an offer the following Monday, March 16. However, that Wednesday was March 11. I decided to work from home because I was spooked by COVID-19. We were all told to WFH at end of business that day.

The role ended up being eliminated on March 16 instead.

It wasn't a personal factor, but goddamn I was salty about it. Getting denied that internal transfer, even though it had nothing to do with me, really soured my feelings on that company. That plus the feeling of not having any more interesting advancement opportunities in my existing role were big factors in why I left.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#62

Post by burnished »

0x426577617265 wrote: post #34
Spooky23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, reacting to the headline is less outrageous. The sage wisdom from the ILM professor was essentially to avoid pissing off rejected candidates by not interviewing them, as interviewing is a signal that the employees are qualified. That’s pretty fucked up, when you think about what that means from a practical perspective. You’re either interviewing people who are unqualified (some of whom will get position…

> The sage wisdom from the ILM professor was essentially to avoid pissing off rejected candidates by not interviewing them, as interviewing is a signal that the employees are qualified. It makes sense, if the candidate is interviewed + rejected they know there is no upward mobility for them in the company. The next logical step is to look for employment elsewhere that may offer upward mobility.

Opposite. If they are interviewed then they know they are being considered. Further, they are less likely to leave if an internal candidate is selected. The article opines this is because employees will then believe that future hires might also be internal, whereas an external hire signals broader competition for a role.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#63

Post by [deleted] »

duxup wrote: post #21
co2benzoate wrote: post #7

Sometimes I wonder how many people are running experiments on HN users to see what percentage of initial comments tend to be reflexively about the headline as opposed to the actual conclusions drawn in the article.

Feels like HN isn't winning that one either :(

[deleted]

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#64

Post by ravenstine »

etempleton wrote: post #24

I 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…

To be fair, I think the same thing is true of individuals, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Often times the grass is greener on the other side. Granted, it's industry dependent, but if you are in tech then there are countless green pastures to pick from. From a company's perspective, they know they don't want to pay someone significantly more for the same position, so they figure they won't lose much by waiting for employees to leave and hire a fresh new employees for roughly the same wages as the preview ones. It also means any potential baggage created due to office politics and or bad attitudes work themselves out to some respect.

Unless one is an outright wizard at what they do, which is rare, what should make anyone think a company needs to keep them around? We are all replaceable. Companies should only hire internally if it makes sense. The fact is that 99% of us are just adequate in the eyes of our employers, and if they play their cards right, they have more to gain by hiring new team members than ones they know they aren't that enamored with.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#65

Post by majormajor »

I wish there were more specific numbers than "twice" and "half" and such.

Was this generally a 3% likelihood turning into a 6% one? A 20% turning into a 40%? More?

The takeaways about the process - it's less likely to lead to them leaving if it's early (edit: misread this, looks like later is better) in the process, or if it's in favor of a different internal candidate - are very interesting, nonetheless, but I feel like the headline could be overstated depending on the magnitude of the probabilities.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#66

Post by cortesoft »

etempleton wrote: post #24

I 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 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.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#67

Post by joiguru »

undulation wrote: post #58

Interesting but is this surprising? I imagine a good portion of those looking for an internal transfer are yearning for a change; once rejected internally, the only place to look is beyond your current company...

Surprising-ness is a not a good metric to measure social/psychological science research by. Often a statement and its opposite can be intuitive.

If the opposite result was stated here one could have easily come up with many "intuitive" explanations.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#68

Post by lvspiff »

ourguile wrote: post #10

This 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.

I've applied for 6 various higher level roles after being with the company I'm at for 5 years and getting numerous high level ratings each year - I got non responses and even one "oh we've only posted this one for someone else" on all of them so far. Started looking externally because of that.

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#69

Post by batoure »

notjustanymike wrote: post #3

Not a particularly shocking conclusion, but good to have the data. Telling an employee they have no opportunity for vertical growth in an org typically results in negative consequences.

> Telling an employee they have no opportunity for vertical growth in an org typically results in negative consequences.

This is totally it, putting a team member through rejection without giving them a growth plan and telling them you want them to succeed or grow basically gives them a map to the door

Re: Rejected internal job applicants are twice as likely to quit

#70

Post by yardie »

gxqoz wrote: post #32
resoluteteeth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my first thought (that the effect is just due to correlation with people already being unhappy with their current position, rather than specifically being caused by the rejection) but the article says this which seems to potentially suggest otherwise: > Second, a rejected candidate’s likelihood of leaving was cut in half if they were passed over in favor of an internal candidate, rather than an external cand…

That is surprising to me. I'd expect that your peer getting a promotion over you drives a lot more people to leave than someone external being hired for that position.

Psychologically, I think I understand. Selecting a peer over you means they were slightly more qualified than you, it could happen to anybody. Selecting an outsider means you weren't even remotely considered. And if they aren't seeing you and your contributions maybe another organization might.
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