i ask what they are looking for and get vapour back

Something I keep running into and I want to know whether it is the question or me.

Fairly early on, once a chat is actually going, I ask some version of what are you looking for. Not aggressively. Just because I would rather know in week one than week eight whether we want completely different things.

What comes back is almost never an answer. It is see where it goes, or open to whatever, or I do not really label things, or a joke. Friendly, no hostility, and also nothing at all. Then two weeks later it turns out they did know exactly what they wanted and it was not remotely what I want.

Is the question badly phrased? Is it too early? Am I asking people to commit to something on message five that nobody can honestly answer that fast?

Because at the moment I feel like I am doing the responsible thing and being punished with fog for it.

The question is too big and it arrives as an exam. Nobody can answer what are you looking for honestly in a chat window, partly because most people genuinely do not know and partly because any specific answer feels like it forecloses the person they are talking to. You will get much further asking about a concrete thing. What their last few months of this have looked like, or what they wish happened more often. Small and specific gets you an actual answer, and the actual answer contains the big one.

Agreed on the mechanism and I would add the ordering. If you ask before saying yours, the honest answer is expensive for them and free for you, so of course you get vapour. Say what you want first, plainly, in one sentence and without hedging it into meaninglessness. Then the question is not an exam, it is a comparison, and most people will meet you at roughly the level of specificity you opened at.

half of them are not being cagey, they genuinely do not know. see where it goes is an honest answer from someone with no plan

also some of them do know and are not telling you because the true answer would lose them the conversation. that is information too, just slower and more annoying to get

On the receiving side, the version of this question I answer properly is the one that gives me somewhere to stand. Asked flat, it is a job interview and I go vague on instinct. Asked as, here is roughly what I am after and I would rather find out early if that is wrong for you, I will tell you the truth including when the truth is that I do not know yet. The difference is entirely in whether the asker has taken any risk first.