Applied online, was invited to a call with a recruiter a month later. After an initial screening call, I had a 30-minute interview with the hiring manager, who asked some basic competency questions. The recruiter then reached out with a case study task and gave a week to prepare. After spending several days of work on the presentation, I presented the interview to three people within the company and was afterward invited to a final stage, with three separate interviews (two on Zoom, one in person). After receiving positive reviews in my interviews, the recruiter then called to double-check my expected salary and promised to give me a call, regardless of whether I was getting an offer. After following up, the recruiter sent me a clearly copy-and-pasted email at about 17:30 on a Friday. I was incredibly surprised not to get an offer considering I was slightly overqualified for this role. The entire process was positive, but the lack of feedback or transparency after the final stage left a very sour note. The final correspondence from the recruiter gave me the impression that they a) had no intention of filling this role and instead wasted a month of my time or b) advertised for this role without having the budget to hire someone.