After enough processes, the pattern announces itself. Past a third interview, the candidate argued, a company is usually not being thorough. It is being unsure — and the extra rounds are less an investigation of the candidate than a search for unanimous permission to say no.
The longer a process runs, the more it stops measuring the candidate and starts confirming what the panel already suspects. Effort, at that stage, buys nothing. The person the company actually intends to hire, the candidate noticed, is usually not the one being dragged through seven rounds; they get the offer quickly, while everyone else is kept on the line as a backup.
The evidence was personal and exact. At one health clinic the candidate sat through seven or eight interviews — and months later met the person who had been hired, who had done two. The same day they wrote the post, a rejection arrived for a role where they had done four interviews while everyone else did two or three. Fully qualified, and certain of their fate since the third round.