When interviewing for a promotion internally to a first time manager role, how do you compete with external candidates with leadership experience?
The main answer here has to start with being a top performer. That is your strongest case to beat out external competition as you've demonstrated the ability to successfully sell the product to your target market. Secondly, I'd make sure to get your current manager to be your advocate with the hiring manager. Its always a risk hiring a first time mananger. The hiring manager will need some extra convincing and a peer recommendation goes a long way. Also I'd make sure you are leaning into being a mentor with your current team and demonstrating that you are doing the job before receiving the title. Best of luck interviewing OP, keep us posted on how it goes!
Every hiring decision has pros and cons, so you should focus on what you bring to the table as an internal candidate. Here are some examples that you should leverage during the interview / hiring process: 1. Your expert knowledge of your product, services, customers and market so you can hit the ground running. 2. The fact that you've been a successful contributor on the team for a while now which significantly decreases the risk vs. an external hire. 3. Your success on the sales floor has built goodwill among your team members - they know you can do the job and they have seen it. 4. You've built up goodwill with other departments across the organization and have good relationships and will know how to navigate internal dealings (not using the word politics, lol) A key worry that senior leadership may have is that you don't have experience managing people but you should say that you feel 100% confident in your ability there and you also have seen that the organization provides great support for managers which you're excited about. Good luck!