Motive Product Manager Interview Questions
& Process

I found the job posting on the company's careers site and submitted my application. The online form was straightforward. About ten days later, I was contacted for a first-round interview with someone from the talent team, who was really great. I got feedback the same day and was invited to interview with the hiring manager. Scheduling was a bit of a challenge because I'm in the UK and the hiring manager is on the West Coast, so there weren't many overlapping times that worked well for UK business hours. The coordinator suggested times as late as midnight BST, which didn't seem very considerate of my situation. When I tried to get more info about the typical working hours for this position, the team stopped responding, and it's been over 2.5 weeks since then.

So, I had these interviews with Motive, and I was pretty hyped going in. First, I chatted with the technical recruiter for like 30 mins, and it was cool, she seemed professional and gave me the lowdown on the job. Then she said the next step was a chat with the hiring manager, supposed to be behavioral, all about my past gigs. But, man, that 30-minute call with the hiring manager was wild, seriously the weirdest interview ever. He was late, didn't ask anything about me, my background, or what I've done. Instead, he opens up my current company's website and spends like 20 mins bashing our product, saying it's useless. I ended up defending our product instead of talking about myself. It felt like he was more interested in getting our tech strategy secrets than seeing if I'd be a good fit. I kept things general 'cause I wasn't about to spill the beans. I felt kinda bummed and confused after, like, why wouldn't you want to know who I am or if I can even do the job? I found out the hiring manager was new, only been there a few months, so maybe that explains the awkwardness. As someone with experience, I just expected some basic interest in what I bring to the table. Oh, and I told the recruiter about it, and she actually got back to me, apologized, and told her boss. She was on top of it and said that's not how they do things.

Started with a recruiter call, then a hiring manager call. After that, I had a bunch of behavioral and case interviews with different team members. The case interviews were tough and included analyzing graphs/charts, figuring out how to fix a problem with a fake app, and a product strategy question about a real Motive example. It felt like a typical hard-to-get-into Silicon Valley PM interview that needs some practice and strategic thinking. Overall, it was good. The recruiter got back to me fast, and everyone was on time, professional, and polite, though not super chatty – more brisk and focused. It seems like a culture where people get their work done, and it's very spread out across timezones.