The recruiter emailed to say to call for an update. He assumed that meant feedback, or an offer. On the call, he was told the company was still interested but could not make an offer because “things were on hold.”
He asked whether the role was on hold. No — the role was not on hold. The decision about the role was on hold.
He asked whether he had been rejected. The recruiter said he was the top candidate, but that the role itself had changed. He asked for the new job description so he could check whether he was still in the running. The answer: the team was holding off on deciding about the role while it waited to see whether it needed to restructure the role based on expertise.
Six people had interviewed him. There had been a take-home exercise. His reading was that nobody was getting the job — that the role was being kept open by someone at the top waiting for a candidate who would never arrive, while the team absorbed the work of the role and several others.