Referred by friend had one or two calls with future colleagues and boss, then met them in person before accepting position. This was ten years ago so probably different now.

I want to highlight a pattern of questionable hiring practices surrounding a specific role: Enterprise Architect, RISE. The Allegations of Bias Despite numerous public postings for the Enterprise Architect, RISE roles, I allege that not a single qualified external candidate who isn’t well connected to the hiring team has been successfully hired. The roles are predominantly filled by pre-selected internal candidates who are well-known to the hiring manager; or in exceptional cases by well connected external candidates. In cases where external or former employees (like myself) are interviewed, I believe these interviews are often conducted merely as a "cover" to meet procedural requirements, giving the false impression of a fair and open selection process. My Experience as Proof I have firsthand experience with this practice. I applied for the role and was interviewed, but was ultimately rejected on the grounds of lacking sufficient "business knowledge" and "local market knowledge." This justification is highly questionable given my background: I am an Australian citizen and have worked in Australia for over 20 years. The rejection appears to be a pretext used to avoid hiring qualified external candidates in favor of pre-selected insiders. The Context of the Role To understand the motive, it's important to know the nature of the role: The Enterprise Architect, RISE is essentially a low-skill/non-skill, non-chargeable role given to customers migrating to SAP's RISE offering. It's a position that can be easily fulfilled by individuals with generic skills, such as former Technical Quality Managers, Customer Success Managers, or Partners. In fact, all roles that were previously part of the defunct Customer Success Partners (CSP) team have been re-homed into the RISE EA title, which explains why internal staffing is so pervasive.