[andrewstuart]

Also, companies can use "level of enthusiasm for working here" as an excuse for their poor recruiting practices.

"OH, the candidate dropped out of our recruiting process? But he was only at interview four after 6 weeks.... well it doesn't matter because clearly he didn't want to work here enough - we want people who really want to work here and are willing to do what it takes to get a job with us."

Even worse: "But he'd only done our coding test after 5 weeks, there's still three interviews to go."

The recruiter usually gets a phone call at this point "Got anyone else, this time someone who actually wants to work here?"

[danek]

Yes this too. Someone I know was interviewing at google (his first choice, he did a few rounds), and then later at some other places. Google took three months to get back to him and gave him a really good offer, but by that time he had already accepted somewhere else.