And I was not an attractive proposition, so competition was not welcome.
Competing priorities at work here. The existing staff at an airport may prefer that they end up training and working with the most 'attractive proposition' available, which means publicising a vacancy as widely as possible, or they may hope that nobody half-decent applies in order to force an improvement in their terms and conditions.
My own view is that ATC workers are best served overall by widespread knowledge of the state of the jobs market, so they know their options or know the best time to push for improvements to T&Cs. Periods of churn in the jobs market and airports poaching experienced staff from each other are the best time for this, and we seem to be in one of those just now.