Hiring from the outside was easy. I had one interview and was immediately hired the next day, even though there was a holiday weekend coming up and they said I probably would not know until after the holiday weekend. Being interviewed as a current employee sucks. I've been through dozens of interviews. Usually there is an initial interview, then a follow-up interview, and sometimes a third interview. Most of the time it is all for show, as most of the managers I interviewed with already had someone in mind that they were going to promote, but they need to "go through the motions" per HR rules. One manager consistently refused to give me an interview for a supervisor position, instead setting up "meetings" with me to tell me why I was not good enough to be a supervisor. I applied four times in five years for the job, every time it became open, and each time it was a different reason why I was not qualified. Every time I made note of the reason and worked on those reasons to make myself qualified for the next time the opportunity came around....and each time there was a new "reason". I actually had to train one of the people that was hired for the supervisor position at one point. Bottom line, once you are in IGT, if you don't know anyone or don't suck up, you won't go anywhere. Hard work, consistency, perfect attendance, good ideas for improving IGT, these things don't matter. In five years I worked my way from a bottom feeder to a "lead" position and was constantly told how the managers could sleep at night knowing I was "running the ship" - but I wasn't good enough for a supervisor position, even though I had previous supervisor experience and had demonstrated excellent teamwork and motivation skills. What matters is who you know, who you sleep with, who you go drinking with.