The process was lengthy due to a few rescheduling issues. The initial recruiter call is very standard, my recruiter was very professional and communicated next steps clearly. After the recruiter call, I had a take-home exercise which was really fun; however, the tricky part is presenting insights that are closely related to Thumbtack. The take-home exercise prompt has been edited to provide more instructions since it was confusing when I first received it. Then I had a call with an ACM employee who was nice and sharp. I actually really enjoyed chatting with the ACM. I moved on to onsite interviews next, and this is the part where things get tricky. Onsite interviews are done with mostly Category Managers (most have an MBA / consulting background). I got a strong feeling the Category management team is plagued with business-minded individuals who are not technical and have no prior experience working for a tech company. There was one ACM during my interviews who mentioned the team is trying to move towards a more data-driven team; however, the category managers seem to be looking to hire mini-me's, and candidates who would tackle problems just as they would tackle them. Overall, I felt the role itself is quite interesting and with a huge potential to make a positive impact in the company but the current team members are discarding amazing talent because they are too picky, and they seem to want to hire people who think like them. Additionally, they're solving issues in a way that's not the most effective for the company and users. I really hope this will change in the near future because I like Thumbtack and would love to see them do better.

I applied to this job through Glassdoor, but they called it "Product Strategy & Ops Associate" when I applied. The interview process was long, but it was by far one of the smoothest interview process I've been through thanks to the recruiting team there. Here were the steps I went though: 1. Phone call with HR. 2. Phone call with hiring manager. 3. Presentation/exercise of reviewing quantitative and qualitative data and making product recommendations. 4. 3-hour on-site interview. 5. Final phone call with the hiring manager. (I didn't get to this part) The presentation was interesting, I liked the topic and that told me I would have liked the job if I had gotten it. The way they structured it was very confusing though. They used a handful of internal metrics and gave vague definitions, even after I probed. Also, Thumbtack's platform has been through a number of changes in the past few years. But the assignment provided data and screen-shots from 2016, and I was to give product recommendations. But what if the solutions to these 2016 problems were fixed in 2018's version of Thumbtack? Was I supposed to suggest 2018's product implementations and pretend I didn't know they were in use (which is what I did for about half of it)? Was I to ignore 2018's solutions and provide newer ones? It was just a mess, and they should update the assignment. It almost hurts you if you are familiar with their product. It could be so much better. They said the assignment should take me 4 hours, but I'll admit I spent like 2 full days on it. If I had the time, why not? The on-site interview was long (3-hours), but actually very efficient. It wasn't just asking behavioral questions, but broken down into three hour-long sessions: presenting my assignment, user testing focus group exercise, and a case study. It didn't feel like 3 hours. All of this I was extremely prepared for because the recruiting team told me everything I needed to know to prepare a week before coming in. But the interviewers could have been more engaged. Some were eating lunch while speaking to me, some seemed 'too cool' to be acting in the "mock focus group". And I hate vague questions in interviews--if you know what you want me to answer, just ask me straight up and I'll get it 'right' or 'wrong'. This all might be nitpicking, but if they strive for perfection this is what I have to offer. During the on-site, there's a lot of questions on pricing, user empathy, product management-driven suggestions. Remember this role is a category manager, so it's about fixing specific categories Thumbtack has (like home, or pets) and also making things work all together as a full platform. Through the assignments and questions you have to think of the users, the pros, the specific category, the whole platform, and Thumbtack as a business. I was disappointed I didn't get it, especially having gone through 4 of 5 steps in the process. And especially especially because of the free lunches cooked in-office every single day. I arrived around lunch time and it looked delicious. What I liked about the team was the work they did. I felt pretty excited about the opportunity to do that type of work at a large tech company. Also, the team's diversity in terms of races and ages was strong. Overall, the people were nice, and I was able to see myself working comfortably with most of them. What I didn't like about the team was they claim to want people of diverse professional backgrounds, and maybe that's true for the larger team, but of the 5 people I met and the 1 person who ended up getting the job over me, all of them came from business analyst or consulting positions. I was also supposed to meet 6 people, but 1 wasn't able to make it. Which would've been fine if that person wasn't potentially the exact person I'd be reporting to if I had got the job. They also didn't know what the exact role was they were hiring for (they needed a category manager, but didn't know what category they would be assigned to). That was a slightly strange part of the experience for a candidate. Again, the recruiting team was so helpful and quick to respond. One of the best recruiting teams I've ever worked with. They had really robust feedback after nearly every step of the process (mostly after I submitted my assignment and after my on-site interview). Except they gave me a shirt at the end of my interview that had Thumbtack's logo and they assumed my size, so it's way too small, and why would I want a shirt of a company who didn't hire me anyway lol. Also, I was told in an email on a Friday they made a decision, so they set up a call with me on Monday to tell me the decision... Perfect way to ruin a weekend with overthinking.