Sitting across from Sarah, the VP of Talent, I can see the exact moment she remembers she owes me an email. It’s a twitch in her left eyelid, a micro-adjustment of her posture as she adjusts her glasses. We are in a quarterly strategy meeting, surrounded by 12 other colleagues, and the air is thick with the smell of burnt coffee and ambition. It has been exactly 42 days since my final interview for the Director of Operations role. In those 42 days, I have received zero updates, zero rejections, and zero clarity. Yet, here I am, nodding at her slides, pretending that the giant elephant in the room isn’t currently trampling over my professional dignity.

This is the agonizing limbo of the internal candidate. It is a unique brand of corporate purgatory where you are expected to perform your current job with 102 percent enthusiasm while being ignored for the one you actually want. The organization tells you that internal mobility is the lifeblood of their culture, a testament to their commitment to growth. But the silence tells a different story. It tells you that you are a known quantity, a safe bet that they can afford to keep on the hook while they hunt for something ‘transformative’ in the external market. It’s a psychological grind that feels like being told you’re part of the family, only to find out you’re the cousin who didn’t get an invite to the wedding.

The Street Corner Test

I recently found myself in a different kind of misdirection. A tourist stopped me near the cathedral and asked for the way to the river. I pointed left with absolute confidence, only to realize two minutes later that the river was a sharp right. I felt that hot flash of shame, the realization that I’d sent someone on a wild goose chase. But at least I was a stranger.

When a company does this to its own people-leading them toward a goal only to leave them standing on a street corner waiting for a bus that isn’t coming-it’s not a mistake. It’s a systemic failure of respect.

William S.-J., a friend and an addiction recovery coach, often talks about the concept of ‘the waiting room.’ In his world, the waiting room is that period of precarious sobriety where the old life is gone but the new one hasn’t quite materialized. He argues that the danger isn’t the struggle itself, but the lack of feedback. Without a sign that you’re moving forward, the brain begins to eat itself. You start to interpret every missed call or delayed email as a personal indictment. In the corporate context, 22 days of silence is enough to make a high performer start looking at the exit. By 52 days, they’ve already mentally checked out. By 82 days, they are actively interviewing with the competition.

The Win-Win That Isn’t

The irony is that internal hiring is marketed as a win-win. It’s supposed to be faster, cheaper, and better for morale. Yet, the reality is often a bloated, political mess. Managers are reluctant to lose their best people, so they engage in subtle sabotage. HR is overwhelmed by 332 external applicants and figures the internal guy ‘already knows how we work,’ so he can wait.

There is a fundamental dishonesty in how we treat internal ambition. We ask people to be vulnerable, to put their hand up and say, ‘I want more,’ and then we treat that request as an administrative burden. I have seen 2 candidates for the same role be treated with such differing levels of professional courtesy that it fractured their relationship permanently. The result is a process that feels like a slow-motion car crash. You see the impact coming, but you have to stay strapped into your seat and keep steering.

Breaking the Ecosystem

We need to stop pretending that internal hiring is a favor we do for employees. It is a rigorous business necessity that most companies handle with the grace of a caffeinated toddler. When the hierarchy is this rigid, every interaction becomes a performance. You can’t just be a person; you have to be ‘the candidate.’ This constant pressure to be ‘on’ while being kept in the dark is what leads to the ‘quiet quitting’ that managers love to complain about. If you want people to stay, you have to treat their time as if it costs you something. Because, eventually, it will.

I’ve watched executives who couldn’t spare 2 minutes for a status update suddenly find themselves laughing with their subordinates because they both failed to master a hill. It’s a reminder that we are humans first and resources second. The corporate structure is a construct, one that often obscures the very talent it claims to value. If a company can’t handle the ‘limbo’ period with transparency, it’s because they’ve forgotten that their employees have lives that exist outside of a spreadsheet.

I remember talking to William S.-J. about a client of his who was 32 days into a new habit. The client was terrified of failing. William told him that the fear wasn’t the problem; the secrecy was. As long as the client kept his struggle hidden, it had power over him. The same applies to the internal hiring process. The secrecy-the ‘we can’t tell you anything yet’ and the ‘it’s still in process’-is what creates the resentment.

[Transparency is the only antidote to the resentment of the ignored.]

– Observation on Corporate Trust

The Cost of Taking Loyalty for Granted

We often talk about ’employee engagement’ as if it’s a metric you can buy with a ping-pong table or a free lunch. But true engagement is built on the foundation of being seen. When an employee applies for a role, they are giving you a map of their future. If you take that map and throw it in a drawer for 62 days, you shouldn’t be surprised when they find a new route out of your building. I’ve seen companies lose their most loyal directors because they couldn’t be bothered to send a 2-sentence email on a Friday afternoon.

It’s a bizarre contradiction. We spend thousands on headhunters but zero on the emotional infrastructure required to keep our own people. We treat the external candidate like a first date-all flowers and best behavior-and the internal candidate like a long-term spouse whose presence we’ve started to take for granted. We forget that the spouse is the one who actually keeps the house running while we’re out flirting with the ‘transformative’ stranger.

The Outcome Justifies the Means?

There is no ‘outcome’ that justifies the destruction of trust. Even if the internal candidate gets the job, the 82 days of silence will have left a scar. They will enter the new role not with a sense of triumph, but with a lingering suspicion that they were the second choice, the ‘fallback’ plan that finally became convenient. That’s a terrible way to start a new chapter. It’s like being proposed to after your partner spent three months publicly dating other people. The ring is nice, but the story is ruined.

If you find yourself in this limbo, my advice is to stop waiting for permission to feel frustrated. Acknowledge that the process is broken, not you. Take a leaf out of William S.-J.’s book and find your own ‘sober’ reality. Don’t let the silence of a middle manager define your worth as a professional.

And if you’re the one holding the map? Send the email. Even if the answer is ‘I don’t know yet,’ that ‘I don’t know’ is infinitely better than the void. We are all just tourists trying to find the river, and the least we can do is point each other in the right direction, even if we’re not entirely sure how far away the water actually is. Does the organization you serve actually deserve the loyalty you’re so desperately trying to give it?