The screening interview was rescheduled three times by the external recruiter. On the third attempt, the recruiter did not join at the scheduled time, I had emailed the Friday before to flag that the calendar invitation hadn't updated, and again Monday morning to confirm. Ten minutes into 15 minute slot, I emailed again. I then received an email with no acknowledgement of either message, stating the calendar hadn't updated and rescheduling again. The screening finally took place on the fourth attempt. The recruiter herself was personable. The screening was approximately 15 minutes. Most of it was the recruiter describing the company and role. Questions included: "What are your three superpowers?", availability to travel to Italy within three weeks, and preferred payment method. There was also a direct question about coding ability, which I flagged as unexpected, since the job description made no mention of technical requirements or coding experience as a prerequisite for the role. Stage 2 is a live coding interview. 30 minutes, one-on-one with an engineer, two algorithmic problems in a shared Word document. No IDE, no compiler. Pseudocode is permitted and the stated focus is thought process. The job description I applied for described a fairly standard Product Owner role with no indication that coding was a requirement. During the interview, I stated up front that I had no coding experience and would sound out my reasoning in plain language and possibly pseudocode. The interviewer confirmed my conceptual approach was correct on both problems. The rejection email contained no specific feedback, so I can only infer that the decision came down to syntax and vocabulary rather than problem-solving logic, which, for a non-technical PO role, raises questions about what the assessment is actually measuring. What to know going in The role reports to a Director of Engineering. There is no product leadership referenced in the process. Coding ability will be assessed even though it is not listed as a requirement in the job description. Budget significant time for the process,from application to coding interview (the first official stage) took approximately one month, factoring in the rescheduling. Verdict The people I interacted with were professional in manner. The process itself had friction, repeated rescheduling, a no-show, and a technical assessment that was not signalled in the role description. Candidates who come from a non-engineering background should go in knowing what the process actually involves before committing time to it.