Applied online, got contacted by their recruiter in a week or so. The recruiter didn't seem to have read my CV prior to the conversation at all, and seemed a bit confused and distracted. The requirements listed generic machine learning skills (which I have) and some niche computer vision experience (which I have only partially). The recruiter said that it's fine and they don't expect a perfect candidate anyway, so he progressed me to the technical interview round.
The technical interview with a hiring manager was arranged shortly. The first question the interviewer asked me was "Ok, so what did our recruiter tell you about this job?" And in 9 out of 10 cases you know what follows after that: it turns out that any major or minor details about the job mentioned by the recruiter were false. It was indeed the case. The hiring manager was looking for both generic ML and computer vision experience, but it didn't seem to have successfully registered with the recruiter. Once it was clear, I apologised for wasting the guy's time, and we had a small chat out of politeness for five minutes.
Many third-party recruiters tend to waste both candidate's and employer's time like this, but it certainly is the first time in my nearly 20 years of job hunting when it's done by an internal recruiter who actually works for the company.
