"The company has the right to take as long as needed to make a hiring decision. The company may have held off making a formal offer due to derogatory information found in your reader's personnel file; the company may have been under the EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) gun to hire a person for this position who was in the "under-utilized" category; or the company may just have been trying to keep cost down and go with the most qualified but lowest paid candidate.

"In any case, the way this episode was mishandled, I'll bet the supervisor who made the verbal employment offer won't be getting a performance review that she can send home to mom."

Susan Smith senses there is more to this story. Smith, president of Smith Professional Search in Bingham Farms, Mich., has extensive experience in executive recruiting and has observed many similar situations.

"When a highly regarded former employee wants to come back, the red carpet is rolled out," Smith explains. "Your reader, perhaps not a stellar employee in the company's perspective, got her info from the often unreliable grapevine. Perhaps the supervisor didn't have the authority to make a job offer, or perhaps your reader misunderstood. The supervisor may have had her hands slapped for making an unauthorized offer, causing her to ignore your reader."

If so, why didn't the supervisor or manager just communicate that she spoke out of line? "Rather than encourage lawsuits," Smith says, "employers commonly say nothing or simply that a person didn't fit rather than offer detailed explanations."

Smith says it's shortsighted for an employer to dangle a candidate for six long weeks:

"With companies spending buckets of money to land on 'best places to work' lists, why not learn to understand how candidates view their application process? When a candidate is asked to come in for an interview, takes the time to prepare for it, uses personal time to be there, and then the company never communicates the outcome, what kind of impression does that leave on the candidate or perhaps a future customer? Ethics? What about the Golden Rule?"