I think the worst one of those that I ever dealt with was at a local university where I had applied for a position that is so, so, soooooooooo much closer to my house than the companies I've worked at for the last 9 years.
They had a phone interview, an in person interview with the direct manager, a skills test, interviews with several other managers in the department, and in my case -- as I was told it was down to me and one other candidate -- interviews with the next two reporting chains up from the position. All in all? I lost three days of work, without pay, and had it confirmed from multiple people that I would be hearing back from them within the week.
I think I called two or three times over the next month because I've worked at universities before and they're notoriously slow, so I didn't give up hope. (At one ivy league, I applied in September and started in January, FFS.) By the time I received a "thanks but no thanks" from the hiring manager, I'd already gotten the form rejection letter from their HR department -- three weeks earlier. It took her two and a half months to reply with an 'encouraging' note about how great a candidate I was and she'd keep me in mind for future positions, which at that point is really just insulting.
Apparently, they have a tendency to wait until the new hire has settled in for a few weeks before bothering to cut the other candidates loose.
Fun Fact: Their graduate school programs have tried to recruit me HARD for a couple of different Master's degrees since, especially after finding out that I tend to work for very large corporations that end up partnering with local schools for various MBA and MS programs and spend a lot of money to do it. Every time they call, I politely inform their recruiters that I'm not willing to attend a university that treats their prospective employees so poorly, shows so little professionalism, and give them that hiring manager's name.
