The interview process was... kind-of bizarre?
I did an initial call with a recruiter, a call with the interim hiring manager, and five calls with folks around product, all over video. These were scheduled as one call, another call a couple weeks later, three calls a couple weeks after that, another call a couple weeks after that, another call a couple weeks after that. No one ever knew the hiring timeline.
Several of the calls were very conversational! I wouldn't say that they went well or poorly--they just *were*. The people I talked with were nice, but I didn't learn much about the role, and they didn't ask many specific questions.
The other half of the calls were very strange and off-putting, though. The interviewer would join the call, say, "I have a list of questions. There will be some time at the end for you to ask questions, too," and then just start reading out things from a doc they had in front of them: "Section 1, Question 1: What is your philosophy on [thing]?", "Section 1, Question 2: What can you tell me about market research?", "Section 2, Question 1: ...", etc.
Several dozen one-off questions, over 40 straight minutes.
They never asked a single practical question or gave me an exercise. There was no traditional "PM interview". There was no back-and-forth. They never even asked what I was looking for in my next position.
They would mute themselves and type out seemingly everything I said. I'd try to ask a question, and they'd keep typing for another 5-10 seconds before unmuting, giving a non-answer, and then muting themselves again. One went out of their way to comment that my answers were unusually long and thorough. Another went out of their way to comment that my answers were remarkably short. They were asking many of the same questions, and I was answering them the same way both times.
On at least one occasion, I asked a clarifying question, and the interviewer said that they didn't know either, because they hadn't written the question, but to just say something, because they needed to write something down.
At least half of the interviewers also didn't bother to introduce themselves, tell me what they did at the company, or tell me how long they'd worked there. So, at the end of the call, with the three minutes we had left, I'd ask, "Who are you?" Many of them had not been at the company for very long, so when I asked questions about the org, they said, "I'm not sure!" and told me to ask someone else, but not who else, exactly. When I asked about the product team's priorities, they all gave conflicting answers.
At the beginning of the process, I was told there were multiple product openings working on growth, customer-facing features, and internal infrastructure. I asked multiple times what kind of product role I was supposed to be interviewing for--all require different skills, and some of them would be such a non-match that I really wouldn't have bothered!--but none of my interviewers seemed to know.
It was a good round of practice interviews, and I met a couple of nice people-the recruiters in particular were genuinely wonderful, and I hope to work with them someday. But it seems like the company has had some recent departures alongside org growth, so people around the product department implicitly disagree on what they need, no one is taking responsibility for establishing consensus or filling those organizational gaps in the meantime, and some people are hoping to climb the corporate ladder?
