Lateral Process Thoughts

First time, long time. Currently, I am going through a lateral recruiting process. I got into it by reaching out to the group head. He noted that they were thinking about hiring at my position (unique product experience), but hadn't kicked off a process yet. He then connected me with one of his MDs, where the conversation went well, and the MD would get the internal process going. HR was slow getting things going, but they ended up putting up a number of online postings for the role, and then HR scheduled a couple of calls for me with someone more junior and someone more senior in another reporting line, albeit in the same global group. I haven't heard back thereafter after checking in.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. Usually, in my past experience, HR gets involved at the end of an interview process to get approvals and finalize paperwork, while the candidate's interactions would really be just with the team, and I've never had a process where I spoke to the most senior people first and then more junior people. Not sure what to make of the outlook on this process. Should I expect that they used my initial interest to kick off a full recruiting and resume screening process? Or is HR just doing what they need to do to fulfill compliance requirements?

Normally, I don't really stress about these things, but it's a tough market right now, and I'm sure there are thousands of candidates floating around out there.