[Robadob]

I recall a friend ~12 months ago (in their final year of university), hearing positive news back from IBM after 6+ months of silence since their interview, by which point they had accepted a job elsewhere.

I expect some companies prefer not to officially reject, so they have more applicants to potentially consider for future positions, although many may have taken jobs elsewhere by this point.

[atirip]

I was once rejected by Spotify 6 months after i sent application in. No hard feelings, I just wonder who was that who waited that process out and got hired ;-)

[x1798DE]

I have no experience on the hiring side of this, but I always assumed that a lot of companies prefer not to make any clear statements until after a decision is made, since at this point it's basically zero cost to defer making a first contact with someone. It's quite possible that the person who got the job applied 2 weeks before they hired him/her, went to the top of the "interview" pile, and soared through the process.

Of course, it's also possible that someone did wait in the queue - I've been interviewing for jobs since the beginning of the year, some of which had almost no lag in contact but a fairly long process (multiple phone screens, etc), others had long lag time but a quick process.