The process: Extremely knowledgeable and pleasant to talk (TMO) leadership team during their SIX rounds of interview process over 8+ weeks. Each round is an elimination round with Hiring manager, hiring manager’s manager, peer for the role, recruiter, HR Business partner and senior HR executives involved in the discussions. Very engaged conversations about future of the business function and candidate’s vision for the role. The recruiter was extremely helpful and communicative. Able to provide feedback after each round and kept the external candidates interested in the role after each round of interview. After the final round, alignment on compensation expectations were discussed with the recruiter. The decision: The hiring manager decided to promote an internal candidate after a debrief with the panel. Suggestion: If the organization is serious about promoting internally, that should translate in an actual decision without having the external applicants to go through so many rounds of interviews. It takes a lot of time and emotional commitment to prepare and to attend each interview. Given each interview that was conducted in sequence over the eight weeks, was an elimination round, the panel could have determined strength of the applicants early in the process.