Engine Product Manager Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process involved meeting with several members of the leadership team initially. While they were all pleasant and appeared to be team players, they repeatedly mentioned that the CEO, who also serves as the CPO, was the ultimate decision-maker. My subsequent 30-minute call with the CEO was perplexing, as it lacked any questions about my background, skills, or work style. Instead, it felt like he was attempting to validate preconceived notions he held about Product Managers from corporate environments, such as their perceived lack of proactivity. I challenged these assumptions, which he seemed to dislike. Following this, I was assigned a business case, which I found to be a complete waste of time for everyone involved, as no one asked any questions about it during the discussion. This reinforced my understanding that the CEO had already made a decision prior to the case presentation, rendering the subsequent discussions and evaluations moot. My advice to future candidates is to engage with the CEO as early as possible, as other interviews appear to be a formality given his final authority.

So I interviewed for a Sr PM role at Hotel Engine, focused on Core/CX. It started with a recruiter phone screen, then a 1:1 with one of the two new VPs of Product who is the hiring manager. After that, the hiring manager said the next round would be a take-home case study, maybe 6 hours. But then they changed it to a live 4-hour session, scheduled for one afternoon. This meant I only had 2 hours and 45 minutes for the case study prompt, followed by a presentation to a panel over Zoom that could be up to an hour. The panel seemed new to the company and disorganized, which felt unprofessional and low-energy. The case study was about analyzing Booking.com and suggesting UI/UX improvements for corporate bookings, basically giving them free insights. I felt like they were getting free work. I didn't do well on that round because I was so frustrated. The recruiter gave me unprofessional feedback, saying I couldn't present to executives and was performing below a Senior PM level, which was confusing and felt unfair. The recruiter called me instead of emailing, but it was still a waste of my time. Overall, it was a regrettable waste of time, but I learned to be wary of case studies. I'm glad I didn't end up there.

Had a 30min background call with a recruiter where we talked about my experience. The recruiter was helpful in explaining the specific experiences they were looking for. After that, I had a 1-hour interview with the hiring manager, who is the VP of Prod. Both people were really nice and genuine. Unfortunately, I never heard back about whether I was moving forward or not, even after following up 6 weeks later.