“If he doesn’t work out, you can take his salary out of my bonus” (alexpotato.com)

Hiring freezes issues by the top management can be weird. A department will start hiring a person as contractor (different budget) or the person gets hired by their PR agency who conveniently raises their monthly invoice (different budget). I've also seen an intern salary getting paid by a vice president out of his salary. It is worse in publicly traded companies.

Good close. I have seen the "have a strong network" pay off over and over again.

Yes. Unfortunately, some corporate rules suck! And oh another thing, I hate it when they expect you to say some bullshitty stuff during interviews just so they'd hire you, when you havent really done those things in the first place! Duh!