I will try to be brief:

Does a potential candidate for a position at a company he does not work at (but interviewed with) have any recourse in filing a formal complaint with HR on the following:

1) After an extensive 10 week process of interviewing candidates for a Regional Sales position in New England (this included interviews by HR via phone, face to face interview with the potential boss locally and flying out to HQ in CA for more face to face interviews) I was informed in the final round that another candidate got the job by only having phone interviews and did not fly out to HQ in CA for face to face interviews.

2) This candidate also did not meet the requirements stated in the job description (not a BSEE, no RSM experience, no experience in selling power semis, no account knowledge of that company's customer base).

I am not trying to come across bitter about not getting the job, I just would like these unprofessional, unethical practices to stop so no one else has to go through the frustration that I did.

Thx!

You are coming across as being bitter, but I know where you are coming from. There doesn't seem to be any professionalism in the business world nowadays regarding this type of exposure. I could site many instances. You didn't fit the bill and will have to regroup, as probably many others like you had to. No I don't think you have any recourse because quite frankly, you were not working for this company and applying for position, while an outsider took it. He was probably better qualified and that could have been confirmed. You don't know this. Where would you report this? It can't be this company you applied at, they wouldn't even give you the time of day.

Nope, you have no reason to complain to the hiring company. They picked the candidate that they thought best suited them, for whatever reasons they had. I am surprised that you actually found out who they hired, much less the process that they used. Generally all you get is "sorry, we have decided that you are not the person we are looking for". So, you don't know all the reasons for why they picked the other guy. And it's possible that the information that you do have is wrong.

The company probably already had this person in mind and just had to go through the motions of interviewing other people for the job. Have seen this particular underhanded behavior many, many times in the past. Does not surprise me one bit anymore. You shouldn't be either once you know the games companies play and have played in the past. I've even worked for some of these game playing companies that put ads in the papers, made face to face interviews with the candidates and then hired somebody's brother or sister for the job. They just had to go through the motions to make it look good. I even asked them why they did this and their answer was (not so surprisingly) that they "had" to to make it look good to some higher up who had no idea what they were doing and that the hiring person wanted to "look busy" as well. Go figure.

You can complain about this if you think you were the best candidate, but I doubt it will get you anywhere.

It was totally your choice to jump through the hoops they placed in front of you in the attempt to obtain the position.

At any point in time, you had the option to put an end to the madness, and look elsewhere.

I see no point in reporting anything, as if the HR dept. is not already aware of their procedures.

If you want to report it, you could report the business to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but it probably will not do much good, though you will feel better about it.