I know that there is a preselected candidate for a position to be filled at my department. What should I do? There is a rather attractive position to be filled at my department. The heads of department are already quite sure about who should fill this position. Jobs being filled with preselected candidates are not exactly legal, but common practice in my country. Thus, there legally has to be a job announcement, as everybody has to be given the chance to apply for the job. There further is an equal opportunities office that ensures that all candidates are being judged by the same categories and no one gets preferential treatment.

I never found this practice of preselecting candidates particularly fair or ethical, but let's just say that up until now I had to deal with other challenges. Then I recently stumbled across the list of applicants for that position by accident (was still lying in the printer) and saw that I know one of the applicants who apparently will have no chance against the preselected candidate. It's not that I desperately want this acquaintance ("friend" is too much) to fill the job, but knowing a name on the "you're never gonna get the job"-list made the unfair treatment so much more real. I don't find it acceptable.  

Things that speak for me to do nothing:


Most importantly: My contract will be finished soon and I was, am and will be dependent on my boss's willingness to  give me a contract or rather (because there is no funding) her cooperation on further projects.
The head of department is my direct boss and (in my opinion) a very likeable person.
I highly appreciate her concern for her staff, she nevertheless needs to make strategic decisions at some points, which comes with the job and is only professional - I understand.
Furthermore, as much as I know the preselected candidate seems to be a very good, high impact candidate who will fit in the department.


Things that speak for me to do something


Most importantly: It's a unfair/ unethical system and I don't want to stand by and watch
There is no funding for a future contract anyway (although my boss tried)
There may be many other candidates just as good or better than the preselected one


What should I do? I'm not gonna lie: talking to my boss (head of department) scares me quite a bit. But then again I don't want to go to higher levels, be the whistleblower and ruin parts of my boss's career...



[Update]
Based on your answers I did/will do the following:


I talked to a colleague, turns out she had the same impression and wanted to talk to me about it as well. So concerning the question "do you have proof?": at least I have another witness now. But then again, as Anonymous Physicist wrote: up until now, no rule was broken. However, we decided to closely follow the application process in hope that our concerns were exaggerated (which I highly doubt)
"maybe it was just a statement about the quality of the candidate?" It very much exceeded this, as my boss was talking about how important it is that they get the participant through the application process and what possible pitfalls could be. Nevertheless I'll talk to her in order to find out, what her behavior would look like if "someone better" shows up and if that'd be a case of nepotism (see answer of xLeitix).
One important consideration that you should take into account is whether there is an actual case of nepotism or not. Nepotism is if the preferred candidate is objectively inferior to at least one other candidate from all the information that is accessible to the selection committee. Or, in other words, if the head of the department is willingly hiring a worse candidate because they like them better, owe a favor to somebody, or have some other invalid reason to give one candidate preferential treatment.

The problem is that many "not really open" open positions aren't actually like that. In practice, what I often see as the main reason why a department or selection committee quickly zeroes in on a specific candidate is that they know much more about one candidate than about the others.

The most typical example is as such: There is an open search procedure, and a number of external candidates apply plus Alice, a candidate that has worked tightly with members of the department before, and which has been explicitly invited to apply. What you now see is a tremendous information asymmetry - the department knows little about the external candidates, but before they even open Alice's application folder they already have a great deal of information about Alice. They know what she can and can't do. Where other candidate's past successes are just a line in a CV to the committee, for Alice they know the full story, how she achieved them, what she has learned from them, and how this would help her be effective in her new position.

Recruitment is always a risky proposition, in academia just as in industry. We all have seen candidates that looked great on paper but turned out unsuitable for reasons that were impossible to glean from an application package. Faculty visits help, but how much can you really learn about a person in one or two days, especially in a somewhat artificial and often strongly rehearsed environment? In this situation, a risk-averse committee (and, realistically, this is basically every committee) has a strong incentive to go with Alice over a candidate that may have a slightly stronger CV, but also a much higher margin of error. As a consequence, a committee may prefer the "known candidate" Alice despite her weaker CV for completely rational reasons (which makes it different to nepotism). In essence, them doing so may be the optimal move for them given the information they have and how much they are willing to risk.




  What should I do?


Depending on how close you are to your boss, I would carefully try to find out why they prefer one candidate so much over the others (i.e., talk with them about it). It is completely possible that you may find that their reason is solid given the information that they have. Even if you disagree with their reasoning, understanding it may make the situation easier to accept for you. And if it turns out that there actually is a clear-cut case of nepotism (your boss knows the selected candidate is inferior, but decides to select them anyway), you have a much, much clearer argument for any potential whistleblowing.