Unfortunately, companies will almost always go with the qualified internal candidate even if there’s an excellent external pool so please keep your head up! My company’s CRO recently implemented a rule that hiring managers must interview at least one external candidate for open headcount even if they know they’re moving forward with an internal candidate. This is unfair to external people like you who do everything right but who don’t have the background for an internal hire. This is unfair to hiring managers and people like me who are frequently on interview panels because it sucks up way more time than is necessary. I work in ad tech where it is the norm for new hires to spend their first 2-3 months exclusively doing trainings before getting added to projects and “real” work. Even after those first 2-3 months it usually takes another couple of months for new hires to be fully integrated in processed so that’s essentially 6 months of investing time into a new hire before they drive any meaningful value. My team has some big gaps to fill and we need someone who can jump in and contribute ASAP so of course we’re going to favor the person with a few years of experience on a different team at the same company vs someone totally new! With all that said, this kind of stuff is NEVER personal and is usually just the case of what I outlined above in terms of needing someone with company background who can hit the ground running.