I'm incredibly sorry for this long message and for any formatting issues or typos, I'm just a bit upset…
I have been working for this company for a few years and I was waiting for a while to be qualified for a transfer. I spoke to one of my co workers who transferred to the department I wanted to go to and he told me to not be surprised if I don't get it right away and to keep trying. He also said that he thought I should speak with my manager and let her know I want to switch departments because she is very well connected and it could be highly beneficial. I didn't reach out to her because the internal transfer mainly required I inform my direct supervisor. My manager is the one who signs off on it but usually if the Supervisor approves it I'd be okay. Plus, my manager and I don't have a good relationship and don't like each other.
I reached out to my direct supervisor who told me that she thought I should go for it and told me that she highly recommended me for these positions. She even went as far as writing an email to approve my transfer and reaching out to the recruitment team to let them know she thought I'd be a good candidate. I started applying to positions I was really interested in and was getting a lot of messages back. I did a few interviews and assessments and everything was going well until I kept getting rejected for literally everything I applied for.
They would be really excited and tell me that they really liked me for this position and were looking into me and then I'd get in email that although I met the requirements and my skills and referrals were impressive they wanted to go with someone who was a better fit. Or they found another candidate. And it wasn't making sense that I would get that far and then everything would just stop with no real explanation of what went wrong. I even started to apply to jobs that would be a pay cut just so I could transfer to that department and it got to the point where as soon as they saw my application they threw it out and rejected immediately.
I don't really know what's happening and I'm starting to think my manager is trying to sabotage me. I knew that she didn't like me but I did not believe she would try to block me from any type of career growth. Can they do this? How can I find out if it's her? Is there a way that I can have this investigated? I don't know what else I can do.