Gelato Product Manager Interview Questions
& Process

Got contacted by a recruitment consultant. Had one screening interview in London office with the Product Manager. Completed very basic online numerical and personality tests. Met the COO in London office who was one the most amazing leaders I have met till date. Spoke to the new SVP Product who will start his role in March but was kind enough to speak to me before joining. Great guy. Went to Oslo for 4 f2f panel interviews. Consultant mentioned these will be mostly behavioural and around my experience and I will get to meet the team and CEO. I had 6 interviews in total, including 1 business case solving,1 very weird unfriendly discussion with the CEO. Final round interviews in Oslo started at 10 with the CFO and the first thing was a Case study. Typical consulting kind of case, pretty straightforward, if you are practise. I did one after 4 years so was very rusty. Practise Mckinsey style cases before final interviews at Gelato. 2 interviews with product managers who were nice people and asked questions about my experience and product. Had lunch with one guy who has been with them since start but had left and rejoined the company 3 times. That did not feel like an interview but more like a get to know each other session. Next was a video call with the SVP of US Market. Another great guy and a very candid discussion. After this I was left in the room for 15 mins while the team decided if they should make me meet the CEO. After 20 mins, the CEO came in, shook hands and said let’s walk and we started walking towards the cafeteria. Read the next part very carefully if you are interviewing at Gelato. While we were walking, he said I will ask you some personal questions which might make you feel awkward or uncomfortable but that’s the purpose of this discussion. When we sat down he introduced himself and asked me to do the same. After he introduced himself he said he hires only from Harvard because you get the best people there. Don’t know why he said it, especially neither of us went to Harvard. He said so did you know I was the CEO of Tele2 and narrated an incident when he fired a non-performing guy who is not a plumber and his ski instructor. Completely irrelevant anecdote. Here is a list of all the “AWKWARD” and “PERSONAL” questions he asked me What was it like for you growing as a child? Where did you grow up? What is that one thing about you that frustrates your manager most? Who is your best friend? How will your best friend describe you? Will your sibling agree or disagree with that? What’s the nature of the conversation you have with your sibling? How does s/he react to your actions? What does s/he say to you? What are your parents most proud of you for? What are you most proud of? Why this job and not something else? Do you think I should have asked you a question I didn’t ask? In between, he also asked me to ask him questions, and I asked 4: Q) What are the top 3 things or challenges that he is working on right now/keep him awake at night? CEO - I feel tempted to answer that, but I won’t. After which he said everything is not a list of top 3,4 or 5. Q) Can you please tell me how you will rank these 4: Family, Customers, Numbers and Team? CEO - This is absurd, I can’t rank these as my family is most important and others are related to his business so I said, let’s keep family out and rank the other 3. He dodged that too. Honestly, I don’t think he understands which is more important. Q) On the company value deck(100+ pages on website) there is 1 slide saying we are a team, not family, why CEO: Go to Harvard Business Review and type Netflix and you will see this case study. Again the tone was very demeaning. Q) Why should I not join Gelato CEO: If you are not willing to climb Mount Everest. Between all this he also told me about “watering the apply tree” principle and why it is a core value to them. In the end he said, he’s a farmer doing his GOOD KARMA. Honestly, I loved every single guy I met at Gelato, including the very nice HR lady who made my travel arrangements, but the CEO acted as a completely demeaning, arrogant and sardonic manager. I wouldn’t work for such a man even if he pays me a million dollars. The guy doesn’t know the H of humility and is too full of himself. He thinks he is changing the entire world through a product which reduces printing overheads for businesses. All in

This interview experience will go down as my worst experience in recent past. The company is obsessed about how great it is and how it is going to change the world, but a direct question on the viability of its business model did not go well with the interviewer. The whole process included an average IQ test followed by Skype calls and on-site interviews. The founder boasts about how they reject candidates from top schools openly, I have a point to make here - rejecting top schools candidates by posting fake job openings doesn't make you a great organisation. It is what you do with your business and culture what makes the difference. On the interview - the IQ test was very standard, if you have taken SAT, GRE or GMAT the test will be a walk in the park. Skype call questions were NOT based on what I did as a PM earlier or what I could do next or how well I can think and articulate or how structurally I can solve a problem. Instead the interviewers asked my bogus questions like these. Gelto is living in a bubble of its own, though I would agree many startups are, but Gelato has taken it to another level. They call themselves the Google of Europe - seriously?

I applied through campus recruiting and got a link for a test, which was a bit unusual, seemed to be from the Nordics and likely assessed reasoning and quant skills. Then, I had two Skype interviews with a Program Manager and another Product Manager. These were mostly about personal fit and competencies, asking questions like 'Tell me about a time when...'. The questions were standard and not too difficult, including 'Why Gelato?', 'Why Product Manager?', and 'Why you?'. The final round involved three interviews on-site in Oslo. The first was with a Recruiter, and the second with another Product Manager, covering the same types of questions as before. The third interview was with a Product Owner, which mixed competency-based questions with mini-cases relevant to the role. For instance, they asked for an example of a good product, why I thought it was good, and what I'd propose to improve it, along with estimating the market size for that improvement. These latter questions were challenging to answer on the spot. Everyone except the last interviewer was really bright, engaging, and professional. The last interviewer, however, played the 'bad cop' role, being uncommunicative, giving minimal eye contact, and constantly challenging my answers. I heard back about the final decision, which was no offer, about two weeks later.