** Glassdoor rejects reviews if the reviewers "have mentioned or discussed yourself or another individual by name, title or association." This is against allowing fair and honest reviews, blocking specific incompetent interviewers to waste the time of candidates. So, I'm going to put a review for Glassdoor itself in the future. However, for the sake of Glassdoor folks to become happy and allow my review, here comes the edited (read forcefully censored) version:
(1) Phone screening call from the recruiter (2) Social chat with the hiring manager (3) Code interview (4) Meeting a product manager (5) Technical interview meeting a senior data scientist (6) Panel interview with a presentation (7) Meeting a senior manager of machine learning
Generally, it was a disappointing incompetent interview.
The education, background, and skills of the hiring manger were far below my own education, background, skills, and experience. He did not even have a proper skill for conducting the panel interview. It was obvious that he lacks the confidence and skills required of a good manager; instead he was trying to prove that his thoughts and words were correct! He was even giving comments during the interview as if they were his ideas or understandings while I had already been covered them! This is a HUGE red flag for a manager position. If he presents my ideas and thoughts as if he had come with them even during the interview, imagine how would that interaction and dynamics be at work place.
The code interview and the technical interview went well -- since both interviewers were knowledgable and friendly.
The last interview with another senior manger -- other than the hiring manager -- went well also. The interview had degrees from prestigious universities and an impressive work experience. It was a pleasure to discuss with him contrary to my abhorrent experience of interacting with my own hiring manger.
The interview with a product manger was completely bizarre. That was the first PM job of the interviewer -- according to his LinkedIn -- and he was working for the company for only 3 months. How can such a person be even eligible to conduct a manger-level interview?! He was even incapable of providing proper and useful answers to my questions at the end.
The recruiter made a mistake also not communicating to me the expectations from different interviews which has resulted in rescheduling the panel interview after 15 minutes through the interview!
And at the end, after wasting more than 6 hours of my time on this procedure, neither the recruiter nor the hiring manger had the understanding that it is required of them to call at this stage of the process! I received a template email saying "The team has decided to move forward with other candidates whose skills and experience more closely align with the needs of the team and even feel in a few knowledge gaps." It was funny to even talk about "few knowledge gaps" comparing me to the hiring manger!
All-in-all, it was yet another unprofessional process and repugnant experience which is unfortunately becoming common.
It's always a challenge on how to act during the interview when I face interviewers -- in this case the hiring manager and the product manager -- which are far less competent than me!