I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at TikTok (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2024
Interview
No product sense, execution, behavioral, or estimation questions. Just domain specific deep dives based on prior experience to check domain-specific knowledge.
The interviewers were in the China timezone, so all the interviews were scheduled in the evening.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Interviewed for the Trust and Safety division, and asked multiple domain related questions in depth based on my prior experience and domain knowledge.
Quite disappointing due to the fact that there was no result updated after HR interview for 3 months, and the interview had gone quite well, ending with the interviewer promising to set up follow up interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What roles did you have in your previous work experience.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok
Interview
I've actually interviewed with this company multiple times for 3 different (but similar) product roles, So I'll share my story. The first time was in late-2022, for a T&S Product role and I felt like it was a very positive experience, interviewed with the hiring manager first, then a PM team member and then a Data Science team member. All the folks I interviewed with were U.S.-based. The interview consisted of pretty general interview questions and the vibes were great. I was later informed that there was going to be a re-org for the team I was going to be on so my role was being paused and that they would not be able to give me an offer at the time. I was told they would reach back to me in a few months when the re-org was complete and hiring resumed -this never happened and I was ghosted.
My second experience (early 2024) I used a referral and interviewed for a position on a team that was still being built, There was only the hiring manager and a skip-level to interview with. My initial interview went fine, but then my skip-level interview was with a China-based director and there were some communication issues, It was relatively hard to understand my interviewer and I'm Asian myself and typically don't have any issues understanding Asian accents, but her english was VERY broken. I don't think the interviewer understood a lot of the language I used, but I did my best to pull through to the end of the interview. The role I applied for was based in San-Jose, but for some reason the recruiter and managers were really pushy about me relocating to Seattle which I wasn't able to agree to because I had just finalized the purchase of my home in California. I was then formally rejected from the role.
My third and final time interviewing with TikTok (late summer '24) was for a similar PM role to the previous ones I applied for, Recruiter call went pretty much the same as the previous 2, and I interviewed with the hiring manager. I felt like the interview went fine until they asked me a question regarding feedback I would have for their application and ways I would improve it, I gave my honest feedback and iterated on my answer on how I would improve it. For some reason this enraged my interviewer and they started to probe me as if I was a detained criminal and they seemed extremely offended by my suggestion. My only guess is that this person most have worked on said feature that I made suggestions to improve on, it was bewildered by the response I got and it seemed extremely unprofessional and bush league to act like that. Obviously I wasn't given an offer or even moved on in the panel after this one. Safe to say I'll never waste my time interviewing with this company again, I know the market is rough right now, but don't bother.. It looks like they're going to be banned in the U.S. soon anyway and everyone I know that works there hates it, so this might have been a blessing in disguise.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A lot of the cookie-cutter general interview questions about experience, behavioral, and some product-sense/data stuff mixed in.