Five rounds. Salary negotiated. Then silence.

A mid-career professional in India applied for a role at a well-known firm and sailed through five interview rounds over several weeks. Every conversation ended with positive feedback. The HR team moved to logistics: salary expectations, notice period, preferred joining date. Only one step remained — a final conversation with the managing director.\n\nThe MD interview was scheduled, then cancelled. Rescheduled, then cancelled again. The recruiter stopped responding to follow-ups. A week passed. Then another.\n\nThe candidate had paused other applications after the verbal commitment. Now there was nothing — no rejection, no explanation, not even a canned email. The job posting remained live on the company's careers page.\n\nWhen the candidate posted the experience online, dozens of others replied with near-identical stories: same company, same five-round process, same vanishing act after the final stage. One commenter put it plainly: "They were never going to fill that role. They just wanted to benchmark the market."