You're absolutely right. The idea to "have to go through HR process" when a favourite successor was already named is so annoying for both the group trying to retain the person and outside candidates. It would be better if they could at least be up-front about having a favourite candidate already.

The other annoying thing is requisition postings staying up after the position was already filled. I had to find out through someone I knew at the company that that was the case in one instance.

Once or twice, in a paragraph where I changed the formatting to get as many lines as I wanted to overlap on a single line and white text, I decided to put "If put in the role of [role] I am hopeful to learn to..." Then I paraphrased every job duty and qualification into that single line. That got me a screening call for a position I was still 3 to 5 years from being qualified for.