Job Seeker Cries After A Company Put Her Through 6 Rounds Of Interviews Before Passing Her Over For An Internal Hire
She was heartbroken, and she had every right to be.
Tonuka Stock | Shutterstock The job market is pretty insane right now. People are going unemployed for months before finally finding a job because there simply aren’t enough roles available. Unfair and hurtful hiring practices make this even harder.
One woman learned this firsthand when she was passed over for a position she was interested in in favor of an internal hire. This would be pretty bad under any circumstances, but it was made even worse by the fact that she had spent two months going through six rounds of interviews for the company.
She was left in tears when she found out that all the time and energy she devoted to this job had been for nothing.
TikToker Isa Castro shared a heart-wrenching post in which she detailed being passed over for a job, but only after she was put through a crazy hiring process that made it seem like she was the candidate to beat. In the video, she cried while she explained the predicament she was in. “I feel silly making a TikTok about this,” she admitted, “but I don’t know what else to do.”
“If you have gotten a job in this job market, can you please tell me what you did in the comments?” she asked. “Because I’m going insane. I just went through two months, six rounds of interviews with a company. Made it to the very end. I was so sure I was gonna get it, and I just got rejected.”
She described the frustration she felt over her job search. “Nothing else has panned out,” she said. “I’ve interviewed with the company I used to work at, other companies, all types of roles. I have an engineering degree. I was working at a really good company before this, and now I’m hitting nine months of unemployment, and I’m going insane.”
In the caption, the job seeker shared more information about what happened in this specific situation.
She explained she was actually passed over for an internal hire. “After two months of interviews, I was told they went with an internal hire,” she wrote. “Someone please tell me what I am doing/not doing wrong. It took a lot of work to even get these interviews, and I’m devastated to hear this news after putting in so much time and effort.”
Castro made it clear that her lack of employment was definitely not a result of a lack of trying. “I’ve tried to cold message people on LinkedIn, leverage my network [and] apply to all kinds of industries and roles,” she continued. “I have a technical background and worked at a well-known company for [three and a half] years out of college before this.”
Unfortunately, commenters had little help to offer. As one person summed up, “Job market is trash. It’s not about you, it’s the market.”
Companies passing over candidates for internal hires is not an uncommon practice.
It seems incredibly unfair that Castro was put through such a rigorous hiring process just to be rejected for an internal candidate that the company probably knew they were going to choose for the role from the very beginning.
Anna Shvets | Pexels
Two assistant professors, Ben A. Rissing from Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Alan Benson from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, concluded in a study they conducted that internal hires tended to perform better and be more loyal than external hires.
Additionally, LYTIQS, a workforce intelligence software company, reported that external hires cost about 18% more and were 21% more likely to leave the company during their first year there. So, there are benefits for companies to fill jobs with internal hires instead of other job candidates.
That does not give a company the right to take up so much of a candidate’s time and give them false hope, though. Yet, that’s exactly what happened in Castro’s case. She really deserved better.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
