I applied end of January for a position in the Product Management team in Indonesia. The recruiter contacted me about 2 working days later and arranged a phone interview. Things went smoothly, the recruiter was very friendly and I really got a good impression of her and the company. She arranged for me a face to face interview 2 weeks later. The face to face interview was with a Product Manager and one of his staff. He asked me about my experiences and then he showed me Shopee’s check out page and asked me how I would test the page. He also asked me if I am an expert at doing test automations. At that time, I thought perhaps because of one of my experiences working in the QA and UAT for a global tech consulting company. I didn’t get the feeling of being asked about product management at all. So that was the face to face interview. Two days later, the same recruiter called and said that despite of positive feedback from the Product Manager, he thought that I was not suitable for the job because he was looking for someone who could do test automation since that would be the job. I was suspicious and confused. There was not a single thing being mentioned about test automation in the job description and job requirement. The recruiter offered me another position in Business Intelligence, which I had very few experiences in, and asked me to do a math logic test similar to GMAT. I had a feeling at that time it was just an excuse to ditch my application. Two days later she informed me that Shopee has decided to not proceed further with my application and nevertheless thanked me for my time. I must say the recruiter is one of the best I have encountered so far, but the Product Management team seems doesn’t know what they are doing or what they actually want. They write a job ad that is different than what they are looking for. When asked about the kind of project management framework they are doing now, they can’t even answer properly. I got the impression that they wanted to talk to me just because I have experiences from abroad and they are just curious of the technologies and skills people have there, with no actual intention to hire me. The Product Management team needs to learn how to be fair to applicants and NOT write one job ad and then expect them to be able to perform something else they are not willing to do or capable to do, and then use this as an excuse to ditch them. Had I known that the main requirement to join the Product Management team there is to be an expert in test automation, I wouldn’t have applied and wasted my time and effort. It is not something I am interested in and definitely not something I want to pursue.