I was contacted by a recruiter from another job board and had a call with the recruiter, then talked to the hiring manager for 45 mins. Next, I had 7 x 30 mins panel interviews. An HR representative was supposed to show up at the end to wrap up the interview but did not show up (keep this in mind). Got another call from the recruiter and received positive feedback and he asked for my reference. After 1 week with no update, I reached out for an update. It turned out that they had a hiring freeze, so they could not offer the position to me. So, obviously, the HR people knew they would have a hiring freeze soon and did not want to waste his time interviewing me, and yet they kept the interviews, which wastes lots of my time and effort. Very bad experience.