Instant Interviews: 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life

Chapter 30. Answering Inside Job Listings: Gold without the Shaft

If you're working now, the very best move—particularly while you're instant interviewing—is often another job with your current employer. Internal interviewing.

There are the obvious reasons like maintaining seniority, keeping vested benefits, receiving the same or better pay, knowing how the company works, and being familiar with its products. These reasons are very compelling, particularly if you don't have a job offer to compare them with.

But less obvious reasons should inspire you to jump at the chance: You know where the company has weak departments, where you can make a positive contribution, where the high profile jobs are, what managers are popular, which ones to avoid, what projects are hot, what the policies really mean, how to score high on performance reviews, how to get raises, which areas have the best promotion potential, and umpteen other things that take any new hire a long time to figure out. (Many never do.)

The big thing we need to discuss here is politics. Pure, raw, and ever-present.

I learned this lesson early in my first HR job after working that desk as an executive recruiter. I learned it from an amazing man who combined the vigor of youth with the wisdom of age. It has probably saved tens of thousands of workplace warriors when I wrote about it in Surviving Corporate Downsizing.

It's the deceptively simple military protocol known as the chain of command. It means that you go through your next ...