There’s a lot I could unpack here, but I’ll keep it short (unlike the interview process at Bolt). The interview process at Bolt was one of the most time-consuming, unstructured, and oddly disrespectful hiring processes I’ve encountered in the EU market during past 15 years. The first recruiter call was fine, technically. Minimal human interaction, low energy. It felt less like a conversation and more like a checkbox exercise. Then came the home assignment. I spent a serious amount of time on it, passed it, great feedback, let’s continue. The first interview was the highlight. An interviewer outside of head office: professional, experienced in e-commerce, genuinely good to talk to. We clicked. That was the moment I thought, okay, maybe this is going somewhere. Next step: two interviews. One interviewer proudly announced he has a tendency to go over time. He wasn’t lying. Almost two hours instead of one. It wasn’t an interview so much as a slow roast, highlighting a noticeable gap in interview standards. The next interview was fine, but repetitive. Same questions, different business cases. By the end, I had effectively done the same job six times The process concluded in the traditional way: silence. Follow-up emails quietly vanished. Eventually, months after, a short piece of written feedback appeared, seemingly autogenerated, marking the official end. Overall, a process that managed to consume a lot of time, I feel truly sorry for those who went through it being unemployed. In my case it was rather an excersise and exploration of opportunities

The Bolt interview process for PM is on the longer side. I had a recruiter call, first round with a PM on the team, a take-home assignment and panel presentation, then a 4-round virtual onsite. The recruiter call is pretty standard and the recruiter did a great job breaking down the interview expectations (including a warning that it's a pretty tough process). The first round interview with the PM was a mix of a short product question and some behavioral questions. The take-home assignment was a little tough/time consuming but doable, and they are really looking for detail with the presentation. The on-site is a bit more tough, as you're interviewed back-to-back for design experience, technical aptitude, PM experience, and leadership. They were all more difficult interviews than an average FAANG type interview, but the hardest was the Product round during the on-site. I was thrown off when I was asked in the last 10 mins or so to answer a product design question that other companies typically allot an entire interview to answer. In my feedback for why I didn't get the offer, the biggest reason seemed to be coming from not doing well on this specific portion, too, which felt a little unfair.