Here is a practical example.
In 2006 I had a temporary job for 9 weeks and of course was able to view all the internal job postings on the corporate Intranet. On a particular day, I might see 50 jobs posted – all visible to the employees, but to nobody outside.
This is normal practice, except when the employer cannot find anyone suitable from within, at which point they post it on the public website. On the same day I might see just 5 jobs posted on the public website.
There might be 5 or 10 employees, or even less, applying for each job posted internally and all having the assurance of their current jobs and income continuing if someone else is selected for the new job that they apply for.
At worst therefore, this might mean a 1/10 chance of any one job application succeeding – plus no worries connected with being out of work.
For the “outsiders” in this example, it’s completely different – only 5 jobs posted on the employers public website, all of them being visible to everybody visiting that website looking for work; this can mean all of Canada’s 35 million people, for instance.
In that situation, there might be between 36 and 5,000 people all applying for the same job.
The employees in the company pay no attention to this - because it is of no relevance to them and they do not think of the affairs of anybody but their own. Result: they all fail or refuse to acknowledge the existence of the problems experienced by the “outsiders” such as myself.