I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Expedia Group (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2014
Interview
1 phone interview with Principal Product Manager. It's important to note that I feel strongly my interview was not an interview at all, but more for information/idea sourcing, which is becoming increasingly common among companies. The actual job opening, may or may not have existed, but it was clear from right off the bat, the interviewing manager was looking for monetization inspiration about a future product offering they were prepping to put out. Every question revolved around the new product feature, and the lack of hiring sincerity was fairly obvious.
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Expedia Group (San Francisco, CA) in Nov 2013
Interview
Specific role: Sr. PM of Social. The interview consisted of: 1 Phone Screener with Hiring Director, 2 On-site Interviews with SF Office (Eng Lead and Program Management), 2 Phone Interviews with Social Media manager and Analytics, 1 Phone Interview with Global VP PM. Early-on the process was expedited; however, several interview participants were late to the calls (including the Social Media Manager that was 20 minutes late and jumped on to the call while driving into work thus ending the call 15 minutes early due to reception issues). The Interview process was not structured at all - most questions were around what my experiences were and what I thought social meant for the Travel industry (Expedia does not seem to know either and believes 3rd party reviews is the best social signal to mine). The culture believes in failing fast yet their release cycles indicate otherwise. Leadership-wise you will not find any MBA/Google/Facebook pedigree within the Product team which speaks to how quickly their share erodes to the competitors. The best candidate will not come in with ground-breaking feature ideas but simply know how to execute given top-down strategy. The role seems more of Project Management than Product Management. The HR Recruiter also failed to respond to any request for progress (she took 14+ days to respond to request for an update). On another request for an update, she took 7 days to reply and blamed Sr Mgmt for the lack of response when likely they were interviewing other candidates. The slow process likely reflects how it is like to work within a non-agile environment there.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Define the roadmap for social in Expedia's travel offerings. How would you execute such a roadmap with limited time constraints.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Expedia Group (Londra, Inghilterra) in Jul 2013
Interview
Six interviews. First was a screening call with HR (about why Expedia, why the role, why me etc. - very general & easy); next was a 1-on-1 with the hiring manager (a bit of overlap with HR & the rest was behavioural); next was a day of 4 interviews with peers & other executives & the hiring manager (again). Next round a mixed bag with some behavioural, some technical & some business case type questions. In general not tough. Got a good sense of company & culture but not of the role as there seemed to be mixed views of it. Tried clarifying that during interview.
HR is completely useless. Had to chase several times for feedback after each round. And finally, didn't get ANY feedback after final round. None till this date. AWFUL really.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you build a business case for automating certain marketing tasks?