I know someone who wanted to move from government contractor to government employee. He was already a veteran, had a degree, few years of experience as a contractor, etc. it took an entire year from “okay we can give you a job” to him starting.
More anecdote: a bunch of contractors were being fired (or whatever it should be called) because the project they were working on was a horrible shit show. I don't know what went wrong, but it was a lot of money that produced nothing and was publicly canceled.
A friend knew a hiring manager and was a quiet shoo-in for a job. HR dragged their feet for half a year and then, suddenly, moved at absolute light speed to get the job posting up, closed, and the shoo-in to be approved as much as possible.
It was because the contract was ending soon. Laid off workers (including contractors), veterans, and people with disabilities are given priority during the hiring process (which makes some kind of sense), but these contractors had such a stink associated with them that the HR people who presumably didn't want to work with the manager suddenly did, just to avoid hiring the contractors.
