If you’ve been getting deep into interview processes lately and then losing the role to an internal candidate, there’s something happening behind the scenes that doesn’t get explained too often. A meaningful number of the postings you’re applying to were never genuine openings in the first place. The role exists on paper and the posting is live, so you can apply and interview and go through every round, but in a lot of these cases the company already knew who they were going to hire before the job was ever posted. In recruiting circles these are called “wired” reqs, which means a specific person was lined up before the role went public. Companies post them anyway for legal, policy, or appearance reasons, but the actual decision was effectively made before you applied. You can’t always identify these from the outside, and sometimes you’ll do everything correctly and still lose because the role was spoken for.…