I did a hiring manager chat round as screen, we spoke about background and had a technical discussion with him as well. Our discussions went really he was very much interested in my profile and possible next steps, after the round HM said he would put for next rounds which is a coding screen and followed by onsite. He mentioned he will ask recruiter to follow up for next rounds. However I wait for recruiter to get back after few follow up emails over 2 weeks, she mentions there was a delay in getting feedback and HM wanted to move with other candidates, I mean how can they just lie like this, if they had internal hire or someone else being hired externally just let know about it instead of bluffing. Why would you try to break the confidence of candidates by relaying wrong information? What do you recruiters get by bringing the morale down of a candidate ?
If it was an internal candidate they went with, then they may have jumped the queue for interviews within those 2-3 week period. So they quite literally may have started after your HM interview timing wise. If that is indeed the case, they weren’t lying at the time