I would not recommend applying for internal/direct positions at the moment if you do not want to waste your time. Based on my experience, I am not convinced that they are actively hiring for these roles. I applied for two different positions with about a two-month gap between them. In both cases, I went through interviews but was ultimately rejected. For one position, I was told I was rejected because I did not have sufficient leadership skills for a leadership role. For the other, which was an engineering role, I was rejected because I had too much leadership experience. The reasoning was quite confusing. At the same time, the same roles were open for contractors as well, which makes me wonder if the intention was primarily to hire contractors rather than internal employees. It is unclear why the positions were also advertised for direct hires. The interview process itself was also disappointing. The questions were very basic, communication with HR was slow (responses often took 3–6 days), and scheduling interviews was difficult. They were not able to provide flexible time slots for interviews. Overall, based on this experience, I would recommend carefully considering whether it is worth investing time in this process.