{
  "registry_version": "2026.08.2",
  "data": {
    "title": "Bench-Priority Fill",
    "status": "active",
    "evidence_ids": [],
    "content": "# Bench-Priority Fill\n\nAn engineer already employed and between projects becomes available mid-search, and the seat the external candidate is interviewing for is filled from the bench.\n\n### Structural Context\n- **Actor:** `policy`\n- **Nature:** `incentive`\n- **Removability:** `none`\n\n### Non-Inferences\n- Does not establish that the internal candidate was earmarked before the search was published — that is M-005, and from the outside the two are the same.\n- Does not mean the external assessment found the candidate short: the search can end for reasons that never reached the assessment.",
    "id": "M-026",
    "type": "mechanism",
    "summary": "An engineer already employed and between projects becomes available mid-search, and the seat the external candidate is interviewing for is filled from the bench.",
    "operates_at": [
      "B-013",
      "B-003"
    ],
    "emissions": [
      {
        "artifact": "A-002",
        "fidelity": "euphemism",
        "likelihood": "high",
        "evidence": [],
        "observed_at": [
          "screening"
        ]
      },
      {
        "artifact": "A-003",
        "fidelity": "void",
        "likelihood": "medium",
        "evidence": [],
        "observed_at": []
      },
      {
        "artifact": "A-016",
        "fidelity": "direct",
        "likelihood": "medium",
        "evidence": [],
        "observed_at": []
      }
    ],
    "facets": {
      "actor": "policy",
      "nature": "incentive",
      "visibility": "opaque",
      "removability": "none"
    },
    "amplifies": [],
    "masks": [],
    "evidence_level": "hypothesis",
    "honest_baseline": true,
    "specimens": [
      {
        "kind": "ats",
        "label": "Requisition timeline",
        "lines": [
          {
            "at": "05 May",
            "text": "Requisition opened — client seat, external search approved",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "at": "26 May",
            "text": "External candidate at panel stage",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "at": "28 May",
            "text": "Internal availability: engineer rolling off project end of month",
            "tell": true
          },
          {
            "at": "02 Jun",
            "text": "Requisition closed — filled internally",
            "tell": false
          }
        ],
        "reading": "Nothing in the record was decided against the external candidate. A person the company already pays became free, and an employed engineer on the bench costs the margin every idle week. The search ended because its reason did."
      }
    ],
    "perspectives": [
      {
        "actor": "candidate",
        "sees": "A process that was moving, then a closure — sometimes naming an internal hire, sometimes just the search ending.",
        "reads": "Indistinguishable from a role that was promised internally before it was posted. The difference — whether the internal person was available when the search began or became available during it — sits in a staffing record no message describes.",
        "does": "Notes the interval between the last positive signal and the closure; a short one is the only outside trace of an availability that changed mid-search."
      },
      {
        "actor": "employer-policy",
        "sees": "A bench that costs salary against no billing, and an open seat that fits someone on it.",
        "reads": "Filling the seat from the bench converts an idle cost into billed work in one move; continuing an external search past that point pays twice for the same seat.",
        "does": "Fills from the bench as soon as the dates line up, and closes the external search that the bench has made redundant."
      },
      {
        "actor": "client",
        "sees": "A seat filled on schedule with a profile the vendor vouches for, often faster than an external start date could have landed.",
        "reads": "Whether the person came from a search or from the bench is invisible in the deliverable, and the contract does not ask.",
        "does": "Accepts the staffing, unaware an external process ended somewhere so that this one could close on time."
      }
    ],
    "non_inferences": [
      "Does not establish that the internal candidate was earmarked before the search was published — that is M-005, and from the outside the two are the same.",
      "Does not mean the external assessment found the candidate short: the search can end for reasons that never reached the assessment."
    ]
  }
}