OMG! 6 rounds of interview? Jeez, is that normal? How did you gather the strength and daring to do it?
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They told me if I pass these, I would be also meeting with the COO, if positive than the CEO. So in total, 8 rounds. Then comes the reference check, as if they havenât understood shit after spending 12 hours with me.
They basically went off-course of the standard hiring procedure which made me hate it.
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@AnaRodriguez, Jesus. Most Iâve done was 4, and that was already a stretch. Is this job search based in the U.S.?
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No it wasnât based in US. It was in Europe and these 6th round rejecters were in France.
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Very curious! Iâve worked in Europe (DE) for 4 companies and not even once I had more than 4 rounds of interviews, not counting the initial screening with the HR person. Sure, sometimes 2-3x 30 minute interviews are done in a row, but I would consider that a single round. Might be industry specific as well.
Extremely lengthy hiring processes are a red flag for me. That and take-home challenges that feel like youâre doing work for the company. It might be that these processes are made to filter the people that REALLY want the job, but for those who are not desperate, itâs a huge turn-off.
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This is crazy. Iâm wondering how you had the mental capacity to interview that much given how intense PM interviewing is! Typically you hear you can only interview 1-2 companies at a time so you donât go insane.
Side note: do you have any interview wisdom you can hand down to someone whoâs a junior pm and will start interviewing for a new role (1 & a 1/2 yrs experience)?
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I think it is important to
- Collect information about the interested companies
- Answer the basic questions they can ask you (sketch out a very basic customer journey, basic KPIs, business models)
- People who work there
Also have enough PM interview questions beforehand, you can check out books by Lewis Lin, they are pretty basic and they had all the information I needed.
I interviewed 7 of them during the same week, which was pretty hard for me. I think the motivation that drove me was my current company driving me insane about the workload / paygrade.
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@Ana, Damn youâre a powerhouse, 7 in week?!
Thanks for all this info, this will be helpful when I start in a few weeks. I am currently reading one of the famous pm interview books.
Were there any questions you got asked in the interviews that tripped you up or you thought were incredibly hard/good questions you maybe hadnât been asked before. This may help some us newbies. Thanks again!
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@Christie, On one of the case studies, I was asked how to optimize the search suggestions over conversion rate and revenue. I was asked to come up with an algorithm, mathematical notation being adequate. Also something about how to optimize an e-commerce homepage for the mentioned above KPIs.
This was a take-home assignment though. The guys were already experts on this so they werenât hunting ideas.
There are some on spot questions, regarding how to better which KPI and what to follow afterward. These being thought for 30 seconds is nothing but the guys were expecting right on spot instant answers. Thinking 5 seconds is not an option.
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Interesting! Thereâs such a variety of pm jobs, my job wouldnât dream of asking us to do algorithms. Thanks for writing out a few of those examples. I likely wouldnât know how to answer those on the spot, or maybe at all.
It never ceases to amaze me how many hats a pm is expect to wear. Design, ux, user research, presenting, PowerPoint/story telling, analysts, scrum master, writing technical specs for your developersâŚthe lists goes on. I donât think thereâs another job like being a pm!
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By the way, 2 years into the PM I donât think you are considered a newbie.
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I feel like a newbie every single day 
But in reality I was referring to newbie interviewing for product. I was internally promoted in an associate pm role, then promoted to PM. So Iâve never had to play the pm interview game yet and it stresses me out.
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What helped me out was, I listed out all the questions that potentially could came. Starting from why I am leaving my current job till how how Google Docs work. Again, this working for me doesnât mean that it will work for you.
It was about 50 pages with answers I think. It helped me big time.
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Ya I will have to do that as well. A pm friend got a job at Amazon and did something similar but did it in story format⌠âtell me a time youâ. Amazon is probably a little easier since they have their principals that they ask questions around thought.
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Thank you all for the amazing responses. Tâwas a very satisfying discussion.
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