>If things seem disorganized at that stage, then I assume that day-to-day operations at the company are even more disorganized

I'm not really sure about that. In my experience there can be a pretty big gap between the initial recruiters (who often understand nothing about the actual qualifications necessary) that are just trying to get as many people in the door as possible, and the actual operations of the company. Granted I have a pretty small sample size, but I've had this misalignment go in both directions.