Didn’t get promoted and am devastated - please help

Please don't follow some posters' advice to go into a huff and threaten to leave! You'll just look unprofessional and unable to deal with setbacks, which isn't really the image you want at work.

Use the feedback, learn from it, and take it forward to your next interview, whether that be internal or external.

Please don’t pay attention to those suggesting you flounce — that’s a silly move.

It’s important to hear the feedback. Once you’ve had a chance to reflect on it, you’ll be in a better position to make informed decisions about your next steps.

The job market is highly competitive right now. While your manager supported your application, it's entirely possible that exceptional candidates with more experience applied for these roles and were successful. If you flounce, you may have difficulty finding a similar role elsewhere as it is a competitive job market at the moment.

Have a meeting with him and listen to his feedback. How people react to setbacks and feedback is really important and a real indicator of future success 2 years is not a huge time to be in a role - it doesn't sound like you were bored and desperate to be promoted until these opportunities arose. He's not necessarily misled you it may be that the other candidates were much better /have different skills- in which case you can work out with your manager how to bridge the gap - you may also not have interviewed well so it would be good to know that.

The manager may be inexperienced and could have managed her expectations better, but equally given the job market at the moment, the external candidates could have been much higher calibre than anticipated. If they already had experience at that level or even above it, they could have outscored the OP no matter how well she'd prepped. He should have let her know sooner though so she wasn't left hanging. Managers aren't perfect but I don't know how helpful it is to reframe him as a dick who set the OP up. It feels like she needs to attach less drama to it rather than more.

Your manager is the one at fault here and you’re right to feel instinctively wary. He set you up to potentially fail and that’s his failing not yours.

I would be reframing this as someone set you up.

Quite possibly his intentions were good and not meant to mislead you but ultimately that’s what’s happened.

You trusted him and his advice and then he broke that trust.

He sounds inexperienced. Managers should not be encouraging junior members to go for jobs if the chances od getting them are low.

as I say, he sounds inexperienced himself.

i would go to the feedback session and try to be professional, no tears and as analytical as possible.

Listen to what he says but know that this person is somewhat out of their depth and may not manage your career with the attention it deserves.

no one is saying you should have got to the job. But he should have managed your expectations better. He’s a poor manager in my opinion. He’s killed off your motivation. It’s all a bit shit.

on that basis I’d be looking for another job. I would not mention this. Lick your wounds, know it’s not you and move on.

sorry but what a dick he is!

I’m sorry to hear this OP. Please don’t internalise it too much. I’ve worked at organisations where the view was external = always better. And often it wasn’t. Perhaps you’re too good at your current role and it was easier to hire bodies into more senior roles and keep you in your place than recruit for your position. I agree with PP that when you feel up to it, you should take the feedback and act on it if you think it’s good advice. I worked for one huge household name organisation where one of the top bosses revealed that for every promotion she had gone for internally, she had been rejected three times and was only ever successful on the fourth attempt! Most people would have thrown in the towel but she stuck at it and is now near the very top…

I would go to a career councillor or coach, armed with the feedback from the manager. They can shed light on it in a different way and provide guidance in what to do for next steps. I did this and found it really helped to look at it all from a different angle.

Not read all the comments so apologies if someone else already suggested this...could you set the meeting in a week or two and ask for an email now with the feedback points? Gives you time to reflect and be ready to discuss, come up with your own improvement plans/suggestions (so you look proactive) for the different areas, and means you can deal with upset in private and by the time the meeting comes around you won't be surprised or caught off guard by any feedback raised. Hopefully it could change the tone of the meeting with your manager to more of a check-in, goal setting, professional development vibe which makes you look motivated and positive and gives you time to process things more privately.

It's a shoo-in, nothing to do with shoes! (I know this isn't pedants' corner but it jumped out at me!

Start looking for another job. I could never be happy again there if that happened to me.

I've been turned down for a couple of promotions. Different circumstances as bigger company where the hires were also internal, and public sector. But I found the feedback really useful and positive. I have ideas of what I would do differently in future interviews. One thing that was very clear was that they mark only on the interview answers you give, not on what they know about you from before. Your company may well have similar rules, particularly if trying to make it fair between internal and external candidates. So it had nothing to do with their opinion of me generally. Also, in both they told me I had secured highly enough to be suitable for the job, just the other candidates scored higher again. So I felt much better about my ability after the feedback.

Classic MN fantasy land where people make wild statements despite knowing barely anything about the situation or people involved. Blows my mind 😂

Exact same thing happened to me OP - I went through the exact same thing twice.

I took the rejection badly for the pure reason that I had been literally covering the role for months already and had also been encouraged to apply by my boss who had the decision to make the hire. Her reason for rejection was because the external candidates had more experience than me. Couldn’t really prove or disprove it.

All worked out in the end as I left soon after - have a way better role and I am now earning almost 3 times the salary too.

I am however absolutely delighted to also add that the external candidates they hired both only stayed for a matter of weeks whilst awaiting other job offers.

@downcast I've been there. Like you I wasn't complacent in my prep, I did an excellent presentation and wasn't successful. The kicker being they didn't fill the role and I subsequently ended up doing it for 18 months and nailed it - great client engagement, feedback, successfully managed a team of 20+ through upheaval and more restructuring. Role never became permanent and more changes broke up a great team. I moved at level to another, unrelated organisation. Within 6 months I was acting in a higher role for 6 months. When that role was advertised (after others acting in it too) I was successful. I moved up to a role higher than the one I didn't get in the other place in less than 18 months.

As others have said, listen to the feedback. Sometimes IME internal candidates can be caught up in the doing and how processes work and don't demonstrate the leadership skills that are being looked for (as an example). So, as hard as it is to do, hear your manager out on what they were looking for. Hopefully the feedback will be really handy for when you interview for other roles. I would definitely be looking to move organisations if you've outgrown your current role. From my experience, you are not going to move up where you are.

A couple of questions.

Are the external candidates male?

Are you an older woman?

I've suffered from both sexism and ageism in the workplace, despite being brilliant at my job. Inevitably, the new starters aren't as good and then I'm asked to help out. Which is a total piss-take.

This, and to say that the OP’s manager made a poor decision when you know nothing about the other candidates is quite absurd.

I've been in situations where the external candidate got the job and then proved to be a great coach to the internal candidate who didn't get the job, helping them to develop and learn a lot so they were better prepared for the next chance to step up. Learning to cope with 'failure' is a vital skill, and you'll hopefully learn to reframe it as an opportunity for you rather than a reason to go to pieces. Likewise you'll come to a point where you realise you don't have to all the extra hours to prove yourself and get ahead and that good leadership isn't about that kind of thing. These are all important steps to come and the first step is drying your tears and getting the feedback.

I think you need to put your shoulders back take a deep breath and have the most brutally honest conversation possible with your manager if you want to learn and grow from this

It's entirely possible they just wanted some fresh energy - which wouldn't be your 'fault' - but you may have weaknesses you could improve on.

As an external candidate who has lost out SO MANY times in big organisations to internal candidates I feel the bias is usually very strongly in favour of the internal candidate who feels they 'deserve' the role.

I would have hated someone to tell me this a few months ago, but hear me out. Over the past 9 months I have had 3 interviews for the next banding at work. It is fairly senior and have been in different parts of the company so loads of prep and all require presentations at this level. I didnt get any of them, the last one being early March.

Like you I felt really down, I actually ended up taking a few days off as similarly teary and feeling depressed. I felt I needed to leave as was never going to progress.

Long story short, I found an unofficial secondment in a team I was interested in (my substantive boss is awesome and lent me out for free so I wouldnt appear on headcount) as a sideways step. That has now led to a permanent promotion that is a band higher than the ones I was rejected at.

Out of all of them, this is the best one by far, not just in terms of money or seniority but job satisfaction too. I honestly believe now getting those other roles would have been wrong for me though I was deveststed at the time.

This job wasnt the one for you, there is a better fit out there. Go to the feedback meeting. I didnt want to for the last one, but I did, was gracious, pretended I was fine and was praised for my professionalism. If you want to stay where you are, no sense in burning bridges.

It SUCKS I totally get that. Schedule the feedback for a week or so. Ignore the posters having a go at you for being too invested. Rightly or wrongly for some of us our work is tied up to our self esteem and sense of worth so rejection feels deeply personal. You are definitely not alone in feeling that way. Good luck.

I would ask for written feedback in the first instance to allow for reflection before a meeting.

This is an excellent post and very true!

As a manager I've been in your managers position. In my case I knew my staff could do the job but their interview didn't go well and HR were insisting on a fair process and the external candidate had all the right qualifications and experience plus they interviewed really well.

Could it be this? If you the feedback might be about interview skills. It is hard but it is also important to be fair to all applicants and I know in the past there were interviews which were just wasting the external candidates time as the job was going to the internal candidate. It almost happened to my husband, it was a big opportunity for him and his new boss admitted that an internal candidate had virtually been guaranteed the job and my husband just aced the interview. It is hard to be fair to everyone but you can learn interview skills if that is the issue. Good luck for the next vacancy.

I am sorry this happened and it is very disappointing for you, but I feel that you are taking this way too hard!

so another candidate was chosen… it happens, it takes nothing away from your skill set or the fact that your manager thought you’d be able to get these jobs! That is positive, even if you did not get it

the fact that you are so extremely upset and emotionally invested shows that maybe it is time to get a bit more of a life outside your work? It feels like maybe your entire self worth is hinging on your job? It is just a job, it does not define who you are

if I wear you I would take some time to process this and rethink how much of yourself you give to this job

I completely understand the investing a lot of personal worth in your work, but yes, as others have said, that's worth working on. I managed to pull back a lot at work (I was doing so much unpaid overtime and so exhausted, never said no etc.) by telling myself that, if I had died yesterday - much as people would be sad - I'd have been replaced within a week or two. Gave me much needed perspective. I still pride myself on doing a good job, but I think I do an even better one now I know to protect myself and my health. And so I don't take stuff like promotions personally.

If you can, I would definitely get the feedback from your manager. Could you say you have a few projects you'd like to tie up and suggest a date for a meeting next week or the week after?

Please don't cut off your nose to spite your face by allowing your emotions to rule your behaviour. Of course getting feedback on why you did not get the job won't be particularly pleasant. No-one would enjoy this, absolutely no one one earth would look forward to this.

However It will help you judge if your manager geuinely wants you to succeed. When you hear his feedback, give it some time and really think about what he says. Does it feel like it is true or is it an excuse. If it is true (however painful it is for you to hear), then take on board what is said and work with your manager to overcome whatever the barrier was

You can also use the feedback and some time to decide if you think you need to change employer or if you feel you can continue where you are. This is certainly something for you to consider, but you can't do that without all of the information you need, some of that important information is why you weren't offered the promotion

I will give a recent example from my work to help you understand why jobs might not always go the person in the current place of work who is looking for a promotion or why they might and why it is sometimes dwn to a bit of luck as well as hard work and effort.

We recently had someone apply for a role who is currently a couple of grades below the advertised role. It was open internally and externally for applications but we only received a couple of very unsuitable applications from external candidates for various reasons.

The internal candidate is absolutely excellent at his current job and incredibly competent but he wrote a very poor application and frankly if he had not been an internal candidate whose work we already knew and if we had a better pool of applicants to choose from, we would not have interviewed him at all

However we did interview him, due to the lask of other good applications, and at interview he did a lot better, but not absolutely stellar. He was pretty lucky that we had no good candidates from external appplicants. Had we had a better pool of applicants he definitely would not have got the job. Frankly his application and even his interview could have been better and we did give him specific feedback as to why that was but he was very lucky that we have had trouble filling the role with no other viable applicants and in fact felt that he could do the job, despite the quality of his application.

So although we gave him the role in the end and he will probably do it very well, even one other excellent candidate would probably have meant he wasn't offered the role. He was lucky in this instance but could easily not have been.

He was also lucky that we gave him feedback on his application and how lucky he was to have been offered the role, which will hopefully help him in other future applications. This feedback was to help him, not us, though I doubt he liked hearing it much