A recruiter tells you that you’re moving on to the interview stage for a job you’ve pursued for months. Your heart leaps. All the networking, market research and resume fine-tuning is finally paying off.
You refresh your stories and continue to brush up on your company research. The interviews seem to go well, and you eagerly await the next steps.
But then you learn the team is “going with an internal candidate.” Your shoulders sag. How can you possibly compete?
The internal candidate is a threat often overlooked by many job seekers. This kind of contender offers significant benefits for a company: they are faster to onboard, come with a vetted reputation and often have sponsorship for the position. And when a leadership team can give evidence of promotion from within, it creates dividends for morale.
But as a strategic external candidate, following some key steps can turn the tide in your favor.
1. Understand your competition. Ask the hiring manager and/or a trusted networking partner inside the target firm if the role is open to internal candidates. Know that the internal promotion or lateral move candidate may be evaluated on their potential, whereas you must provide proof that you already have the skills to succeed. Your proof statements need to be compelling and differentiate you as truly ready for the role.
In parallel, study the job description and seek to understand the greater need of the firm — is it continuity or renewal/reinvention? The key is to read what the organization truly needs next and align your story accordingly.
2. Be clear — and memorable — about your value proposition. Spend time reviewing the facts of your skills and experiences and how they match up to the needs of the role. Identify the three you find most compelling and turn them into clear and memorable soundbites repeated in each of your interviews. Note any skills that will upgrade the role.
Interviewers are context-switching between candidates, meetings and deadlines. Your goal is not just to answer the questions, but to help the interviewer remember you so that they can advocate for you with others in the hiring panel. For more advice on interview preparation, check out these four essential tips.
3. Begin your onboarding in the interview. Show that you already have the mindset of being in the role by creating a 30-60-90 day plan and highlighting it in your interview. This extra preparation takes you beyond articulating that you have the necessary skills and imagines you already in the role. It helps you speak the language of what matters most to your target company. A specific plan will address how you’ll take initiative to get up-to-speed quickly and where you see opportunity for measurable results. Demonstrating that you’ve thought clearly about how to build credibility and quick momentum in the role can help counter the seeming ease of going with an internal candidate.
4. Speak positively. Do proactively acknowledge that the company likely has great talent internally positioned to take on the role, but that considering an outside perspective can advantage the firm. Your broader perspective — an external view — can have a positive effect by challenging ingrained patterns and dynamics. It can bring new ways of problem solving and decision making. It’s contingent on you to highlight how you’ll translate successful practices from prior contexts to this new role. Remember, organizations that intentionally balance insider continuity with outside perspective tend to innovate faster and avoid blind spots.
5. Adopt a mindset of strength. External candidates often have:
- Deeper and/or broader skills developed on different playing fields that allow for new ways of working on a company’s seemingly intractable problems.
- Exposure to different problems, systems and solutions from other environments — perhaps even from competitors — and the ability to apply fresh best practices.
- Key contacts in their network that tap market expertise the firm doesn’t currently have.
- Lack of bias or history in how things have been done, providing the freedom to explore new ways to get things done.
You can’t control who else is in the running, but you can control how well you present your unique value. Stay curious, be prepared, be memorable and prove that the best choice for the company’s future is the new perspective you bring.
If you’d like to schedule a career coaching session with Alumni Career Services, please email AlumniCareerServices@darden.virginia.edu.
