I did an initial phone screening with the recruiter. He advised that it was a hybrid role, although when I applied, it was listed as remote. He stressed that it was very flexible and that I could go to the office twice per week at my discretion, and I didn’t necessarily have to spend the whole day in the office. I went onto interview with someone on the management team. She informed me that was absolutely not the case with their hybrid work policy and that I would be required to be in the office for the entire day twice per week from 9 to 5. she wanted to move me forward to the final stage of interviews which involved putting together what seemed like a semi time-consuming presentation. When I spoke to the recruiter again, I expressed that prior to beginning to work on this presentation that I would like to have a more clear idea of what the actual, in office job requirements are because I have family responsibilities outside of work and I live over an hour from the office. He told me he would look into it and I didn’t hear anything. After 48 hours, I followed up with him by email and he responded right away telling me that I would need to be in the office from 8 AM to 5 PM Tuesday and Wednesday, and he wanted to know if this would be a problem. Obviously, the story had changed quite a bit from my initial conversation with the recruiter. I explained to him that unfortunately, due to my other family responsibilities, that I could not make it to the office by 8 AM, but if I could come in at 9 AM, I could make it work with my other family responsibilities early in the morning. I asked if that would be possible, and never received a response. Overall, very disappointing. The other additional aspects of the interview process that were really disconnected were that initially the recruiter did not realize I was in a different time zone from hiring manager, and so when he scheduled the interview, it was not convenient for the manager whom I had to reschedule with. Also, I was sent one meeting invite and she was sent another and we ended up in different Zoom rooms for the interview. additionally, when I did finally speak with her, she was fantastic. However, the recruiter had sent her an outdated version of my résumé from two years prior when I had applied for another position there. Being on the outside of an organization, sometimes it’s difficult to understand what’s really happening within the mechanics of an interview process. I initially had trouble understanding if I was dealing with a cultural issue or an issue with an incompetent recruiter. After reflecting on my overall experience, I really do feel that the recruiter was the road block when it came to having transparency about job expectations and also keeping the interview process organized and moving forward. Overall, highly frustrating and a significant waste of time.