The interviewer did not drive the interview in the direction she was looking forward to. this left me clueless if I am sharing the relevant information or not. The Case study was quite exhaustive.
Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. We regret to hear that your experience did not align with your expectations. Our case study interviews are designed to simulate real-world situations that our Senior Product Managers often face, with the intention of assessing key skills such as leadership, problem-solving, and effective communication. It seems from your feedback that we may need to make our expectations and the role of the interviewer clearer during the process. We appreciate your insights and will definitely take them into consideration as we continue to refine our interview process. We wish you all the best in your career pursuits and encourage you to apply again in the future as our processes evolve. Thanks again for your feedback.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Monks (New York, NY) in Nov 2022
Interview
It was nice, Fred was sweet and informative. It would have been helpful to speak to someone with a bit more technical knowledge as I think the interview as a whole probably would have been more insightful for them as far as my experience goes. She asked about a specific project in which a problem was solved, asked about a project that had gone poorly, etc. I run a product department so those types of questions don't really get to encompass what my experience looked like and I didn't feel I was given a chance to showcase my abilities otherwise. Very basic PM questions, anything you look up online will prepare you.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic PM questions, best project, hardest project, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Monks (Woodland, CA) in Mar 2023
Interview
Warning, be mindful of time investment; my personal recommendation is skip this company until they change their interview process. Overall, it's pretty clear they don't have the maturity of other companies... but that's also the charm of a smaller companies. Early interview process is standard for technology companies, screens and questionnaires. Where things differ a bit from more established organizations is that TheoremOne immediately jumps into a presentation project. This means that before they've identified culture and skillset alignment... they ask you to put what is realistically a 4-10 hour project. They mention you can use any tools, but I strongly recommend using the ones they use in house to represent your capabilities. They provided a Figma file and utilize Google so while Google Slides is inferior to PowerPoint, it's the smart choice. Interestingly enough, no attention is given to the Figma file layers and controls. I can't really speak to who the interviewer is, but I had a product manager that only had 2 years of experience and clearly didn't have a lot of experience guiding and interview. That said the entire interview process was polite and professional. Unfortunately, they just haven't really figured out how tech should be hired. Consideration should also be given to the fact that it's not a pure product management position and they use it as a catch all for project management and QA as well. It's essential in the small teams, but a lack of refinement around a product management position is also an indicator of how an organization values product management vs other practices.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
[In reference to the presentation project] How would you measure client engagement? How do we validate that it's working as intended?