There are some communication breakdowns between the recruitment team and the hiring team(s) burned me. Entered the process via a warm referral to a senior leader, so had a couple of high quality discussions with current employees before starting the process.
When the process started in earnest I received an email confirmation for a position I had not applied for or was referred to.
After that first issue was corrected, I then received an email rejection for the position, which didn't align with the outcome of the initial, pre-process conversation.
After that second issue was corrected, I then had an interview with the hiring manager scheduled.
The recruitment team indicated it would be an interview focusing on my work history and experiences. Since this was one of my first interviews in 3 years, I spent two days preparing for a conversation about my previous jobs, teams, products, results achieved, specific context, STAR method answers - everything one would prepare for an interview about real world experiences and results.
However all the prep was a waste. When the interview started, the hiring manager said it would be verbal questioning on a hypothetical scenario in real time. No questions or conversation about my experience whatsoever.
Should I have received that information from the recruitment team, I'd have instead focused my two days of interview preparation entirely differently. I'd have focused on speaking to my ideal product management process for a hypothetical scenario rather than focusing on the specific context, nuances, results, and learnings of my unique real work experiences. Needless to say, I was annoyed, surprised, and unprepared. The interview did not go well.
Due to the two prior communication issues in the process, I sent a question/feedback to the recruitment team about the misalignment between the interview brief and the actual interview. It was explained to me matter-of-factly that case study interviews are a standard practice for product management. Not surprisingly, as a product manager, I know that, and I’ve done many of them. But I’ve never in 10 years had them as interview #1, and I’ve never been told to expect and prepare for a real-world experience interview but receive a hypothetical case study interview instead.
So, ended it all with a bad taste in my mouth, and a decent amount of confusion about whether this was a) the 3rd communication issue between recruitment and the hiring team, b) intentional to see how candidates perform under pressure/ambiguity/different expectations, and/or c) an industry standard, my mistake, and something I should expect/plan for better.
