After a series of four virtual and in-person interviews for a Product Owner role, I successfully completed the final round with the VP of Product. Despite this, the team took over three weeks to make a decision. During this time, I repeatedly followed up with HR, emphasizing that this role was my top priority despite having other offers. After another week of waiting, HR informed me that they were likely to pass on my application.
The feedback given was that I might struggle with executive-level communication, not due to my product knowledge, experience, or overall skillset, but because of my accent. It seems their main concern was my immigrant background and the fact that I am a person of color. If this was a critical issue, they could have decided in the first round instead of wasting a month of my time. Additionally, I noticed a lack of diversity within the team, as there were no women and the culture did not seem inclusive.
3 rounds and 1 hr round. It was okay. Professional. To the point. Good leaders and communication.mostly about product cases one after the other. Got repeated questions also. Which is not expected.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Western Union (Denver, CO) in Sept 2023
Interview
Take this feedback with a grain of salt as, after reading other interview reviews, it may not be reflective of Western Union's typical screening process. Initial interview (screening) setup with talent team on 9/15. It was an overwhelming disappointment as it was a position I was really excited about interviewing for and the experience was anything but positive. The person was 6 minutes late to a 30min session and I felt like I was being rushed through a series of questions they were reading off a screen. It was over in 9 minutes. I don't feel like the talent rep really listened to anything I said and was just focused on checking boxes. I also do not believe the talent rep really understood what a Product Owner was, which is unfortunate. There were several times they asked a question about job responsibilities (to which I answered) and then proceeded to ask the same question structured differently. One example, they had asked a question along the lines of "When introduced to a new environment, how do you go about learning?" My answer was (paraphrasing): "There are multiple ways to consume information in a new environment but I find I'm most successful by gaining access to systems being supported since oftentimes that access isn't automatically provided. Additionally, reading old documentation, traveling to sites and partnering with users/customers to learn more about the systems they use..." and so on. Their response to my answer was "Well how else do you learn?" To which I was befuddled because I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about without them providing further context but when I hinted I might need context, I got dead silence. What exacerbated the situation is this was a Zoom call where the interviewer kept video off so there were no visual cues I could pickup on. Then one of the next questions was one where they asked me if I was OK with traveling...as if they didn't hear me suggest traveling to sites in my previous answer. I would've expected a question like "This position may require some travel and based upon your previous answer, it sounds like you might be ok with that. Is that correct?" Another example that leads me to believe they didn't understand the role of a Product Owner is I was asked how much experience I had "leading" scrum teams. So I thought maybe they meant to ask how involved I was with the scrum teams since it's entirely possible (in some shops) for the PO to be completely detached during the sprints...in which I explained my heavy involvement. The immediate next question was "So exactly how many years of leading a scrum team do you have?" And I was forced to say none and explained the scrum master leads the scrum teams, not the PO. Finally, the talent rep indicated the salary capped out about 5% lower than what was posted on the WU careers page. The talent team is the initial interface between a company and prospective employee so as a former hiring manager, I would be concerned if this is the normal experience for screening. I hate that I am posting this feedback now but I do not anticipate this talent rep passing my profile off to the hiring manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
My question to the talent rep: Can you tell me a little about the culture at Western Union? (I asked this as many companies are being very upfront about culture and I was surprised the person had not mentioned it. )
We are sorry about your negative experience while applying for the Product Owner position. We appreciate your detailed feedback, as we take every review seriously. We will use comments like yours to continuously improve our candidate experience.
