If you have no intention of moving a candidate ahead, you should just go ahead and let me know as soon as possible instead of keeping them waiting for over a month and getting their hopes up, especially those candidates who are following up from time to time. Such unprofessional behaviour from the recruiter and such a waste of my time.

A call with a recruiter followed by a homework assignment that I then had to present to the hiring manager and other person. Then a final round where I had a 30-45 minute interview which those two people again. After that - silence. No rejection, no email, no phone call. After about 2 weeks I emailed the recruiter to ask if there was an update and got no response. In my opinion this is quite unprofessional and rude given the time and work I put into this interview and getting to the final stage. Additionally, in the first interview with the recruiter, he asked me my desired salary. I told him I would prefer to first here the budget for the role. He told me that he wasn't allowed to say. I then said that I would prefer to not give a salary range either and he said he wasn't allowed to move me on in the process until I did. So now I am forced to give a salary but they don't give me any information? This is also very strange and unprofessional in my opinion.