I haven’t had exactly this situation, but kind of similar. My first piece of advice is to not make any big decision right now. Keep your game face on, slog through until the weekend or labor day and take a few days away from the office to get your bearings and think about what you want to do. If you decide that you want to move on, keep that fact to yourself (I mean don’t tell anyone at your work, not even your best friend). Keep a good attitude and if/when you decide to leave do it quickly, professionally and mercilessly.
That is not true. You may also be marked as someone who is at the top of the list when a new position opens up.
It’s fine to be upset. Just don’t pitch a shit-fit at work or that door really will slam shut.
When I was in a similar position a few years back, I sat down and had a frank discussion with my performance manager (the closest thing you have to a “boss” in a consulting firm, other than the practice leader). We discussed how my background, experience and performance were consistent with getting promoted to the next level and how that was one of my goals for the following year. We also discussed things I could do to better position myself for that role.
The actual quote was “you were both very qualified for the position”. They went with the other person - well he actually said I could request to see the “hiring justification” form to read it myself - which I have requested. It may help answer some questions. We’ll see.
The person I talked to said they did consider how I would take this and that it would be difficult. Nevertheless - went with the other person. It has indeed been demoralizing for both myself and several of my coworkers, as Quartz mentioned above - some of whom have gone directly to the person in charge of the hiring to express their disappointment.
This appeals to me - If I left quickly - many of them would be in bad shape. I am the only one who gets their data uploaded and ready for them to use. Unfortunately the “them” in this case are the people I work with who I really really like and get along with great. They would pay alongside management.
I might suspect that they didn’t give me the promotion because they want to keep me doing my current job - have their cake and eat it too. People have said I am doing a great job - better than past database managers. Who knows, I would like to think they wouldn’t keep me back for that reason - but if they did, it may well backfire.
At my old job I was passed over for THREE different promotions.
The first time it happened, I was mostly ok with it because the person they hired had more experience than me. Sure, he was lazy and I definitely would have done a better job (as would some of the other people they didn’t hire), but he had more seniority.
The second time it happened, I cried for an entire weekend.
The third time it happened, I finally realized I would never be promoted because I was too damn good at the job I had at the time and they needed me too much in that position to ever let me go. For job interview #3 – they let their chosen candidate (who didn’t even have a college degree) move into her new office the morning of the interviews. As in, they already knew damn well who they were gonna hire, moved her in and still wasted everyone else’s time doing interviews that day. I confronted them with my (useless) union rep a couple of weeks later and they essentially pissed on my leg and told me it was raining. “Oh we don’t know why she moved in,” – oh bullshit. This was an office environment where you had to have permission from management to get a new chair. Nobody could just up and move into a new office without one of the bigwigs’ OK.
How did I handle continuing on with my job? I didn’t. That last incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A couple of months later I found a better job in another state and packed up my bags and family and took my brain elsewhere. I now make twice what I made at my old job.
If you stay, pretend nothing ever happened, don’t burn bridges and keep being awesome. I gotta say though – it feels damn good to know I finally got what I deserved after being fucked over 3 times. It also feels good to know I make more money than the other 3 people they chose over me and work in a MUCH better environment.
Sometimes you’ve gotta give yourself a promotion, ya know?
I assumed the OP would take that into consideration, and based on later comments will look at that. But the OP spoke of a long time before another opportunity comes up, and that doesn’t sound good to me. In a highly structured environment, that is sometimes just the way the ball bounces. But the company could have taken many other options, including a raise and/or promotion of a different kind as a sign of recognition. Without those, it’s a clear cut decision that the other person was superior, and I think the OP disagrees with that assessment.
For better or worse, this person was already hired and you’ll have to deal with that. It’s OK to be disappointed, and even to discuss this with management. But it’s much more effective if you present in a “what would I need to do to improve my standing and have a better chance next time”. If you have problems with this new boss, management may already be thinking that you and your co-workers were predisposed to cause trouble.
Being passed over for a promotion can indeed be demoralizing, but in a professional environment you deal with the cards you’ve been dealt. Don’t bitch, don’t complain, and decide if moving on is the right thing for you.
A lot of shitty things have happened in my work place, and it’s only getting worse. When someone gets screwed over, they react in one of two ways:
- They get all mopey and resentful. The quality of their works drops. They make themselves, and those around them, miserable.
- They let it go and continue to do their job to the best of their ability.
I suspect I’d fall into group 1, but the people in group 2 are much happier people in the long run.
Management makes decisions for reasons that are incomprehensible to logical intelligent people. These decisions usually should not be taken personally. They’re made based on whatever bullshit is going on in management at the time.
My group got a new manager recently. Three highly qualified people in the group were passed over for a young punk with very little life or work experience. He thinks he was chosen because he’s smarter than everyone else. In reality, he was chosen because he can be manipulated and doesn’t know enough to argue with his so-called superiors.
His immediate supervisor is the son-in-law of someone higher up in the company.
In summary, don’t let the bastards get you down. Do what’s best for you.
A lot of what you are saying sounds like you are prepared to be hostile. I want to stress in the kindest possible terms - don’t go there. They made their decision - you really need to find a way to make it work for you (for now, at least). No amount of arguing or investigating will change their decision. Are you going to prove to them that they made the right decision by being a sore loser sucking on sour grapes all day?
Well. I do like sour candy..and grapes! No - you are completely correct. This is why I am taking time off - with the hopes that I can get past this feeling and just be me again at work. At present I keep vacillating between sour grapes and feeling like I can get over it.
I hope with more time I will stop getting negative.
A lot of good advice here. You definitely have to get out of there, start looking for other jobs now.
Externally, just be your normal self at work and don’t hold a grudge. You can’t win them all. That’s life. But planning your exit will make you feel better and it is all you can do to show your disapproval.
It sounds like they had two capable applicants and they chose one of them. I would recommend you drop the issue immediately, be an excellent employee, and look around at other jobs. Fighting this issue will only make you look bad. They are not going to realize they made a mistake, thank you for bringing it to their attention, and give you the promotion. Instead, they will grumble that you’re making their life harder, you won’t get the promotion, and they’ll think worse of you in the future.
If you continue to be an excellent, valuable employee, they will consider you for future opportunities. Maybe it won’t be that position you wanted, but maybe they’ll put you in a different position or maybe they’ll open a new office and give you a great job over there. You do not want to be a thorn in their side since there’s nothing to gain. Be a great employee and they’ll look at you as a valuable resource.
I very much appreciate all the excellent responses and advice. This has been a great help for me - reinforcing what I know inside to be the mature response and warning against my gut responses. I just have to keep working from my brain and not my gut. I will repeat this as a mantra.
I can certainly empathize as the same thing happened to me last December.
It sucks and I have to admit I’m still not 100% over it and often times think to myself, “so this is what a ‘career rut’ feels like”. Some good advice as to what to do appear up thread.
As to what not to do:
Don’t lash out at management. It will make you look bad and only confirm to them that they made the right decision in going with the other person.
Don’t harbor resentment toward the other person. Unprofessional and unbecoming.
Don’t take it up with colleagues and lament how you got screwed over.
I’d say keep your head up, explore other options in the form of a transfer perhaps or applying for some other position. All the same keep the faith and fight the good fight. I wish you my best.
I want to echo those who have suggested that you use this as an opportunity to discuss areas for growth with management - what can you work on now to better position yourself for similar future openings? Even if you don’t think another opening like this will come up at your company for a long time, you will walk away (in the near future if you want to!) with a stronger skill set or at least a stronger set of goals.
Not long ago, I was on the other end of this - I was part of a hiring committee that ultimately passed over a close co-worker for a promotion & hired from outside. This was the second time he was passed over for a position that opened up above him, and he was not selected because - as collegial and competent as he is - there were skill sets that would have been key to the position which were not strengths of his. We also felt that bringing in a fresh pair of eyes would really help us take our projects to the next level - we were a small team & for a few persistent challenges, internal discussions had become very circular.
I don’t know what has happened since then (I’ve since left to go back to school), but as a person who likes this guy and wishes him success, but couldn’t ethically recommend him for this position, I feel that the best possible outcome would have been for him to identify the areas in which the hiring committee felt he was lacking, and become better at them. It sounds positive that you have requested the documentation from the hiring committee. As angry as you might be right now, the best thing you can do for YOU is to take that reasoning seriously and use it as a starting point to strengthening your skills. No matter how good you are, you can be better! </pep talk>
So you didn’t get a promotion?
I have two master’s degrees in my field and am finishing my doctorate.
I have 15 years of experience in my field.
I have the highest level of professional certification in my field.
I have state certifications in the two domains that are traditionally the hardest to fill in my field.
I was laid off thanks to budget cuts and did not get offered a contract by any districts I interviewed with.
Since school has started, I will most likely be out of full-time work for an entire year.
My advice to you? With this economy be thankful you have a job.
Completely inappropriate Saint Cad. How do you know he’s not thankful to have a job? Just because you haven’t had good luck finding employment, doesn’t mean that anyone who DOES have a job can’t have their own gripes about their life and their employment situation.
He wasn’t even complaining or whining. He was just posting about it, and asking for advice. No need to come in here with your pitty party of a post.
I also recommend talking to management after you calm down. It could be that they see some areas which they don’t feel you are strong enough in, or that there are other areas which if you improved on or acquired certain skills that you could qualify for. Or, it could be that there isn’t, and you’ll then better understand your options and can make a better choice.
I hope I can come at this from another angle without seeming insensitive. Recently I conducted interviews for a promotion within my unit. Everyone, including me, expected the woman acting in the role to be successful. The successful applicant was an outsider. This created all the problems you have outlined - one angry, disappointed workmate and others wanting to buy in to the general uneasiness.
As I explained to people the successful candidate had better qualifications and experience than all the people in our unit. None of us would have beaten him at interview but they were all happy for me to shaft him because they work with one applicant. I can understand their desire for her to get the job, hell I wanted her to get it too, but that doesn’t give me the right to cheat someone else of the job they earned. Mind you if our employment rules had allowed me to skip competitive interviewing I would have simply appointed her without a moments thought.
I told her that while it was a shitty deal she did end up with an opportunity to show what a professional she is, by getting on with the things that had her in line for the job and by doing her best to be a welcoming figure to the guy who got the job.
After years of seeing the attitudes of internal applicants after the decision, I have often been tempted to ask in interviews, “What will you do if your application is not successful?” I wonder if applicants will have the nerve to say what they often will really do, “Oh I will sulk and be a negative force around the workplace. I’ll provide no help to whoever gets ‘my’ job and will either piss off or become a discipline problem.”
Perhaps I only have these attitudes to protect myself but I know when ever I conduct a panel there are more people unhappy with my decision than are happy about it. And none of the other people are even forming their opinion on the basis of any of the competitive aspects of the process - they just know that so and so can do the job. So I figure that if I have no reason to doubt myself that’s as good as I can do.
This happened to me two years ago. They hired from outside for a position I was highly qualified for. I was pretty unhappy about it, and experienced the same emotional reaction you mention here. My boss asked me how I felt about it (not an Oprah moment, but to gauge whether or not he’d need to hire a replacement for me). I told him straight up that I was pissed, and I thought it sucked, but that I wasn’t going to be a bitch about it, and that I’d keep on trucking. And that’s just what I did (the not being a bitch about it part). I worked through it and kept performing.
As it turns out, the guy they hired was a real shithead, and only lasted 3 months with the company before leaving under really sketchy circumstances. He worked three major projects in his time here, and fucked up all three of them pretty badly. After he left, I spent MONTHS cleaning up his mess. I also continued to outperform everyone’s expectations in terms of the quality AND volume of my work output.
We spent the next 6 months seeking external candidates to fill the position but they couldn’t find anyone. When our yearly performance review cycle started, I told my boss I’d like to be reconsidered for the position, and he told me that it had already been agreed that I should be promoted, and that it would be made official at review time.
So, hard work and perseverance payed off, just like it says in the encyclopedia.