I applied online and was contacted by a recruiter shortly after. However, instead of the usual HR screening, my first interview was scheduled directly with a senior leader from the product team (the PM role was open for their payments division). No outline or structure of the interview process was provided, so I reached out to the recruiter myself to ask what to expect. I was told it would be “more of an introduction — they’ll tell you about the role and responsibilities.” During that call, the interviewer mainly presented the role and their own experience, asked briefly about mine, and mentioned that the position was “not really a 9-to-5 role,” which came across as a hint that overtime might be expected. After about two weeks of silence, I was contacted again by the recruiter to schedule the next stage — this time with an even more member of the senior product leadership team. Once again, I wasn’t given any details about what this stage would involve. The interviewer joined the call late and was still finishing another meeting when they joined, which set a slightly unprepared tone. The conversation itself felt unstructured: they spoke about their background, asked about mine, and mentioned that they had tried to find my LinkedIn profile but weren’t sure they found the right person, suggesting they hadn’t reviewed my resume beforehand. At one point, they also asked what kind of roles I was currently looking for, which felt unusual since that information was already part of my application. Overall, the process felt somewhat chaotic — especially given that I never spoke to an HR representative at any point. It also felt like they weren’t in a hurry to fill the role and were mostly running exploratory conversations rather than structured interviews. When I asked about next steps, I was told there would be another one-to-one interview and a case scenario with a panel, followed by a chat with HR only if they decided to move forward with an offer. In summary, the interviews were polite but lacked structure, preparation, and transparency about expectations or evaluation criteria for a product management role.