LinkedIn Product Manager interview review | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn Product Manager interview review

jsonk.posterous.com

30 pointsjsnk37 comments

Jason: Take this down. You will almost certainly not get the job if your interviewers find this, for almost any tech company of scale. Especially:

"If I am selected for more interviews, I will definitely write about them."

Maybe he just doesn't care/has already something else lined up.

A friend of mine goes to interviews quite frequently without being the slightest interested in changing his job. His idea is to just follows some practice-makes-perfect motto - almost like dating. But it has of cause its downsides and especially the scheduling seems often to be the ticky issue.

I really don't understand why Jason should take this down. I'd never look down on a candidate for blogging about the interview process with my company.

Compare the upside of writing about his experience with the potential downside.

I don't think many companies are going to say "hey that's great that he did that" and it will help him land the job. But it is entirely likely that any number of companies that he might interview with would be turned off by it and it could cost him the job.

For the author, weeding out employers with that culture might be an upside. It depends what he's looking for.

Assuming names and other identifying details were omitted, would you think it's fine for a company to blog about every candidate they interviewed?

Do you honestly think that the interview processes of tech companies are so secret that posting about them online means instant disqualification from consideration?

I mean, we already know about how Zuckerberg takes prospects on an enchanting walk through the forest. There was nothing negative or damning in Jason's report. Chill out.

Even more so, I would not even interview Jason for our company after seeing this. It isn't like anything was said that is negative... it is just that the hiring process (or anything HR-related) is private. Posting it online shows a lack of professionalism that would make me go to other candidates.

Interesting interviews from Google, Facebook, Microsoft gets reviewed and talked about frequently by my friends and colleagues. I did not know that interview process should remain confidential.

Companies are kind of weird about what's public and what's private.

In this case, the worry is that candidates will see common interview questions in advance. It's an open secret that most interviewers at most companies reuse interview questions to a ridiculous degree.

The right answer is to fix that, probably. Glassdoor is going to change this over time whether we like it or not. But the traditional answer is "crack down on people talking about it."

It is not quite that simple. In most jobs, you will learn confidential and proprietary information. Posting about your interview shows that you care more about publicly sharing your internal knowledge of a company than you do about providing value to that company. That choice is not a trait that I want in my employees.

That's a kind of mechanistic thinking and attention to irrelevant details that might be restricting your talent pool.

Thank you for the caution.

I decided to contact the recruiter directly to discuss the matter honestly. If it is a problem for LinkedIn that the interview process is made known public, then the damage has been done already (I got over 1800 page views as of now). I should be responsible for my action and rightfully be exempt from further selection process.

That's a very high-integrity way to handle this problem. Well done.

If LinkedIn responds poorly after you did this, write about that :-)

I would still strongly suggest that you take the page down temporarily until you hear back from the recruiter. The damage has been done, but can still be minimized.

> After a brief greeting, the interviewer asked me what is the most interesting product that's out there right now on web. I made my first mistake here and answered, Facebook. I had prepared for interviewing about LinkedIn product and set myself up to be interviewed about Facebook for next 40 minutes.

That wasn't a mistake. The answer you think you should have given, "LinkedIn", would have been a mistake. That's probably the answer everybody else gave, and tells the interviewer "I'm here to say whatever I think will make you like me most, so let's start out with the improbable claim that your company is the most interesting thing on the web".

"The interview wrapped up with him asking me to estimate the annual revenue of McDonalds."

Is stuff like this becoming the norm now? This looks a lot like the notorious "estimation" questions in consulting company interviews. Especially because it seems to be taken completely out of context and with very little relation to the actual job/company.

I interviewed for a pm position there a while back - my experience wasn't anything like the blog post. So it's not even the norm (probably) at linked in.

This, and the old "tell us about one of your weaknesses," are strong indicators of a weak interview.

Interesting account, but:

I wouldn't write about this. I could see this being used against you.

Why work for a company that would "use" a dry, factual account of their interview process against you?

Why hire someone you can't trust to keep their mouth shut?

I don't know where you're getting that LinkedIn asked Jason to keep his mouth shut about anything.

I wouldn't go on a date with a woman who blogged a review of every date. At the same time, it'd be awkward if one had to ask their dates in advance not to publish a detailed account online.

It would also be awkward if an interviewee wanted to come back to my apartment for drinks. Interviewing and dating are two different social situations with different codes of etiquette.

Posting to a blog about a first round of interviews while you are still going through them can easily be viewed as premature, immature, and potentially dangerous for the company (but moreso for the reputation of the poster).

Now, if he had been hired, worked hard for a couple of years and was promoted from within the interview story could be considered relevant advice. However it is too early for anyone including himself to glene any pro/cons out of it, and instead the blog post looks like a kamikaze mission to the top of the hill to let his buddies know where the enemies are hiding.

Posting to a blog about a first round of interviews while you are still going through them can easily be viewed as premature, immature, and potentially dangerous for the company

I have read several version of this comment elsewhere in the story, is there any basis for this attitude besides paranoia? Have you ever seen something like this be "dangerous" for a company in real life, or is it completely imaginary? You use the word "easily," so I'm just wondering if it's so common that I just don't get out enough.

An interview is a private interaction; making it public is what some see as poor judgment. If it were the company blogging about every candidate they interviewed, I suspect that would be received in a similarly negative light.

Because they might pay well?

Interesting... college seniors, recent grads, and grad students have enough experience to be Product Managers at LNKD? Where do their junior analysts come from?

Yeah I am pretty sure you are not allowed to post this because you would probably have signed an NDA before your interview.

You have to respect the people at LinkedIn who put in a lot of effort to design this interview process by not leaking it out.

Does that really happen? I have never signed an NDA prior to a job interview.

Just a tip - How to answer the McD question:

McD are spread worldwide - so assume some figures for the leading consumer nations.

For ex - 70% of US population, 50% of Japanese population etc consume at least 1 McD burger/meal a day. Now compute the average price of a McD burger/meal. Multiply the two and you have average revenues per day.

Average price * no of burgers/meals sold per day = Average revenues.

Average revenues per day * 30 * 12 = annual revenues.

Follow the same formula for all product lines and add them up. Hope this helps.

I am curious why would you blog about an interview. Most companies ask you to sign an NDA before the interview. Isn't posting a blog about the interview a violation of NDA?

Lots of companies will put you under an NDA if you interview with them. Be careful talking about explicit questions.

This link has a target="_blank" on it. Is this some new option submitters have?

Well, the downvotes got me to investigate further. It seems it was the Chrome extension JSON Inspector ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mfnjijpckfecpgchob... ) that was inserting the target="_blank" only on this page for the article's link.

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