After the application, you receive an email requesting to do a test assignment. This is not a 1-h task, they ask you to dig into their data from the last 9 months to find some "signals". The data is in a Google Sheet with more than 250,000 lines, so good luck doing in excel.
The task itself isn't crazy hard if you have experience in Data Analysis and are familiar with marketplace metrics and dynamics. Still, this would take you at least 3-4 full days.
After submitting that (if you decide to do the free work without knowing anything about the company or pay) - you will have a call with a PM and you will go through the work you did and will be asked to explain how to came to your conclusions. And then maybe 10 minutes will be taken to tell you something basic about the job/company. The person I talked to was a PM with 1.5 years of experience, and this was his first job. And this person was interviewing Senior PMs. The interviewer wasn't particularly friendly to be honest.
Generally, I don't think it's worth the time spent and won't suggest anyone do the test task.
Red flags that should stop you from wasting your free time
- the job posting is always there, so they are always hiring. I wonder why, maybe the turnover rate is a problem?
- according to LinkedIn, it's 1.8 years, which isn't that bad, but I did my research, and most Product Managers don't stick around for long- they spent less than 1 year there.
- They require you to do a test task before even talking to you. Before even looking at your CV. And it's a very time-consuming task. I'm not against test tasks, I just don't think it's fair at such an early stage. Maybe they filter out really motivated people who are willing to work for free, for a long time, and are in desperate need of a job. So once you do it, they understand that you might be one of those willing to put crazy work hours.
- they don't tell what the pay is. So they expect you to spend 2 weekends doing their test assignment and you don't even know what the comp is.
I've also talked to a former PM employee, who said that the work hours were crazy, till midnight or longer. They don't have any design or Program Management support, so you're expected to do all the figma designs and also do all the planning. So it's not 1 role you'll be doing, but 3. And they do make you write a lot, which it's always necessary.
To be fair, the former employee told me that the people there were smart and the pay was good. But not sure if the good pay compensates for the crazy work hours doing Product, Project Management and Design.