The first interview round was with the hiring manager, which moved quickly to the HM's supervisor. A week following the second interview, I received an email from recruiter that the team was moving forward with another candidate. Later that day, the recruiter called to say that there were actually two openings for this role. An internal candidate had been selected for the first position but the team wanted to circle back around to me for the second opening and wanted to have me interview with another team member. I interviewed with the third interviewer the following day. Over a week later, I got another email from the recruiter that they were again moving forward with a different candidate for the second opening. I called the recruiter to ask for some more specific feedback given the back and forth. The recruiter informed me that the second opening was also being filled by an internal candidate and that the choice simply came down to the internal candidates already being familiar with the company and the group. While I understood being passed over for an internal candidate for the first opening, I found the process afterwards to be extremely inconsiderate. The team reeled me back in after a rejection notification despite having an internal candidate in the pipeline for the second position and there being a clear preference towards internal candidates familiar with the group. To me this reeks of being used to check a box that external candidates were considered despite the knowledge that the internal candidates were going to be preferred. Pulling me back into the process after an initial decline felt inconsiderate and displayed a disregard for their candidates.