I wish I remembered where I read this so I didn't have to post it unsourced and lacking so many details, but I heard about something exactly like this happening: some government agency conducted a search with a tailor-made job description, intending to hire an internal candidate. Along comes an external candidate who also happens to tick all the boxes, but also has slightly more experience with one of the skills. Since they were required by law to hire the "most qualified" applicant, this presented a problem.

So, what did they do? Close the search without hiring anyone, then open a new search with the same job description, adding another skill that only the internal applicant has (I think it was fluency in Italian).

The moral of the story, if there is one, is to never underestimate the ability of people to get a desired result by exploiting the system in an unforeseen way (i.e. hacking). :)

I have been that external candidate. I saw a random job on USAjobs a few years ago that really seemed to fit all of my experience so I figured I would apply for the heck of it. Within a few hours the listing was withdrawn. Weird. Then the same thing popped up again and again over the next couple of weeks and I would apply and it was immediately withdrawn again.

Good to know what was really going with that now.