The contact began with a Google recruiter reaching out after finding my profile on LinkedIn. They were polite and flexible on scheduling in introductory call. They told me a bit about the role and that it was different from most product roles at Google. Typically they don't hire specialized product managers to focus on areas but for this role they were looking for someone specialized in a particular area which I have about 15 years of experience in. They asked me for a little info about myself and felt it was a match and asked if I was interested in moving to a phone screen. They also explained a high level structure of the team and who the hiring manager. He explained he would talk to the team and see if they were interested in moving forward and I left that conversion with the impression that if so, the next phone screen would be an initial call with the hiring manager. They never asked for a resume. It was about 3 weeks before I heard from the coordinator and they provided a time slot that was 24 hours from the time of reaching out. I asked the coordinator who I would be meeting with and they told me that due to privacy I was not able to know who I would be speaking with but that my recruiter (cc'd) could answer any questions about format or how to prepare. I received no further information but was still under the impression I was meeting with the hiring manager. For the interview, I received a call from a product manager at Google. They introduced themself and explained what product they worked on which was completely unrelated to the role I was interviewing for. They asked me to give them a brief overview of who I was. I then asked how is work was related to this role to which they explained that they knew nothing about the role they were screening me for. They explained that Google picks a random product manager to phone screen product manager candidates. As a result, they had no questions about my experience for this "specialized" product manager role and moved on to the questions. Overall the interview experience met all the expectations of a stereotypical pretentious silicon valley tech company. It consisted of 2 exercises - one product, one analytical - with the latter being far more abstract than the former. For the product exercise - I was provided a two-sentence scenario: You have been given 100pb of free storage by your company. How would you build a monetize-able product from it? At face value, the question wasn't unreasonable but the level of detail being asked for in a 10-minutes was. He wanted me to provide a detailed plan and design of what would I build - which customer I would focus on, how I would build the product, a walkthrough of the in-app experience (what is the first thing the user would see, what are the different pages, in the app, what can the user do in it, etc). and what metrics I would use to track success. Referring to the overall product development lifecycle at a high-level to describe my process of identifying a need, determining fit, experience testing etc was of no interest to the interviewer - they wanted to hear exact details on the fly. For the analytical exercise - I was provided one sentence - how much data does a human being transfer in and out in a day. And after explaining my thinking and using hypotheticals are calling out assumptions - they just kept saying - we're trying to get to an exact number - how many mb, gb, and tb does a human being transfer in and out. I don't see what purpose this served seeing as they were interested in actual numbers rather than how I would think about the solving the problem. I asked the interviewer a few questions about Google and then ended the conversation completely unsure of how I could have succeeded in this phone screen. The next day the recruiter contacted me to inform me that he had heard back from "the team" and wanted to jump on a quick call for updates where I was informed that "the team" decided to pass on me as a candidate and that I would not be able to apply for another product manager role at Google for one year. Overall, the process was incredibly frustrating and sadly just as I expected for this kind of company. I don't understand how a hiring manager can determine my fit/qualification for a role with almost no information available to them. They have no resume, a few notes about me from a recruiter phone screen and my answers to these two questions that in no way highlight how my experience aligns with this 'specialized' role.