Am I being jerked around regarding a specific job opportunity?

[drm604]

Several weeks ago, a recruiter got me an interview at a company within a decent commuting distance, doing pretty much exactly what I was doing in my last job. The last job was kind of an unusual "wears many hats" position, so it was unlikely that I'd find anything quite like it, but this job was a close match.

Anyway, after the interview I called the recruiter and he told me that they said that they loved me. I was exactly what they were looking for. I just had to meet with one other person but that was mostly a formality. This was a Friday and he told me that they were going to get back to him early the following week to set up the last interview.

The new week started and I heard nothing. After several days I contacted the recruiter to see what was up. He told me he'd contact them and get back to me.

A day or two later the recruiter called me and asked if I had a problem with a contract to hire situation (it was originally going to be direct hire). I told him that I was willing to do that and he said that he'd get back to me.

A day or two later, I contacted the recruiter again to see what was up. He said that they were taking time to draw up a contract. At this point I started to worry. A few days later I contacted him again and he told me that the company's hiring manager told him that upper management had declared that the company was not hiring anyone for anything right now.

Today I got my usual job alerts email from Dice.com listing jobs that match my skills. Included on the list was the job I had interviewed for at the company that I had interviewed at. The posting date was a few days ago; weeks after I had interviewed for it.

I emailed the link to the recruiter and then called him. He said something like "oh, I thought you might run across that. We saw it the other day. It must be an accidental automatic repost of the job. I'll call them to double check what's going on." I haven't heard back from him yet.

Does the story I'm being told make any sense? What's the point of an "automatic repost" which apparently consists of simply updating the posting date? I had originally learned of the job through the recruiter, so I have no idea if it was on Dice before or not.

I don't know why they would string me along like that, then tell me that they're not hiring right now, then repost the job; so maybe the accidental auto-repost is the truth, but the whole thing seems odd to me. Also, as of right now, the job is still on Dice. If the recruiter called them about it this morning like he said he was going to, wouldn't they have then realized the mistake and taken it down? I should add that the posting is for a full time position with benefits, not a contract.

Am I being paranoid? If they didn't want to hire me, why not just say that I'm wrong for the job? Are they running some kind of H-1B scam with fake interviews?