I agree with you: However, I am unsure who is at fault here. There is a unique problem in that people don't genuinely know what to call the role they want to hire for and there is a worry among recruiters that the "wrong" or "unsexy" job title will put off potentially amazing candidates. E.g. In Linkedin, the data science position for the most part could be more accurately called a Machine Learning Engineer. There are other companies where the data science role could be called a Statistician (As in someone who has advanced degrees in Statistics but who for all they care can't write anything but SQL).
On the other hand, I have never ever found the requirements for a role to be nothing but mostly bullshit. So they don't really help you much. Your best bet if you are not going through a referral is to attempt to get to a phone screen where the Engineer/Data Scientist will be kind enough to spare some time at the end of the interview to tell you what on earth they are actually looking for. You could get lucky and learn just enough to terminate the interview process at this time. The worst situation is where you go there and realize that either a) You are not what they are looking for which is a half a day wasted or even worse b) They have not completely realized what they are looking for.
Me? I have made a decision that I will either apply for software engineering positions where I will maybe be one of the Machine Learning folks or apply to data science positions only if I know some one in the team who can explain to me what on earth that company is actually looking for.
On the other hand, I have never ever found the requirements for a role to be nothing but mostly bullshit. So they don't really help you much. Your best bet if you are not going through a referral is to attempt to get to a phone screen where the Engineer/Data Scientist will be kind enough to spare some time at the end of the interview to tell you what on earth they are actually looking for. You could get lucky and learn just enough to terminate the interview process at this time. The worst situation is where you go there and realize that either a) You are not what they are looking for which is a half a day wasted or even worse b) They have not completely realized what they are looking for.
Me? I have made a decision that I will either apply for software engineering positions where I will maybe be one of the Machine Learning folks or apply to data science positions only if I know some one in the team who can explain to me what on earth that company is actually looking for.