I completed the 5 interviews to look after a Southern European market and the recruiter made me a verbal offer. In that conversation, she explained to me the compensation in detail, we agreed on a starting date and I had to send her my postal address to add it to the contract. She told me that she was sending it for approval and that she would call me back in 3 days to verify if I was still onboard with the idea of joining the company as I was also in the last round of interviews with another firm.
While I was waiting to have the following call, I asked her to change the starting date as I had an important personal event on that date and she cancelled the call. And then, all went South in a very opaque and unprofessional manner. The following week, she asked me to have a call to clarify the update about the starting date and I discovered that they were interviewing other candidates for the role, while she continued saying that she was waiting for some approvals from their side. Waiting for approvals and keeping actively looking for candidates are 2 different things, especially after making a verbal offer. Unbelievable!
In that call, I realised that the company had backtracked and I was not going to receive the written offer. The recruiter did not have the dignity to admit it and kept playing the fool as if keeping the process open after making a verbal offer was something normal. I guess I will never know if all was her mistake for making me the offer or if the hiring manager was behind this.
The cherry on the cake was the way they rejected me. As a candidate that put in the time and effort to prepare and complete the whole process, I received no phone call, just a two-lines canned email with no feedback. I was probably lucky not to join them as people is clearly not a priority for them.
I admit that I was jealous after reading some reviews praising the recruiters as mine did not help me at all. When I asked her about the topics of the interviews she just emailed saying that I was going to be interviewed "for your coachability style, communication skills, and intelligence", and suggested I check the interviewer LinkedIn profile. That was it for 5 interviews. Real advocacy...
Ah, don't wait to receive a survey about how was your recruitment experience because they don't send those. They clearly don't care.