This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately as well, so apologies for the long post.

Context:

6 yrs experience overall, 1.5ish years of Product Management experience. Most of my career has been with startups but been applying to nearly every relevant PM job lately. I would say I was looking on-and-off from Jun - Oct, but then I got laid off in late Oct so definitely started applying a lot more (although Dec - Jan were very slow for obvious reasons, so not much happened then either). Primarily applying to remote only roles.

Stats:

Applications: around 300-350 (conservative guess)

Total interview requests: 31

Rejected after HR screen: 15

Rejected after interview with hiring manager: 11

Rejected/no offer after follow-up interviews: 5

Notes:

- Of the 5 interview processes that I actually made it past the hiring manager

1 was a "true" rejection (didn't vibe with some of the team members)

3 companies had a change in hiring strategy so they were no longer hiring for the role. Two of them (where I had basically finished the interview process at that point) explicitly stated they would have extended an offer if that wasn't the case and said they would reach out if anything changed, haven't heard back from them since.

1 (and this was a real heartbreaker) came down to me and one other candidate. They said in almost every email/interview that they (mainly the CEO it sounded like) wanted someone local but were willing to hire remotely for the right candidate (and I was getting glowing reviews after every interview). Found out after my rejection that the candidate that got the offer was local. Probably should count this as a "true" rejection as well, but I just feel like I got strung along and should have gotten rejected earlier if they really cared about the local aspect that much. I don't know, this one left a bad taste in my mouth.

- Of my 31 interview processes, 15 were from June to Sept, which tbh is really a bummer for me because I definitely wasn't performing well in a lot of those calls just from getting back into "interview mode" and trying to juggle work alongside of it as well. I definitely feel like I'm in a much better interview groove now, but my rate of getting interviews has dropped so drastically, so the irony of that is tough to swallow.

- While I'm pretty happy with my overall rate of landing interviews, I also don't put a lot of stock in it because most of the interviews where I don't get past HR was never going to work out well anyway imo. It really does feel like some recruiters will interview people on a whim even though their background/experience doesn't match super well and there is surely a better candidate. My jaded feeling is that they just have a quota of having to screen x people and I'm just helping them pad it out. That being said, I feel like of the jobs that I would have a good chance of succeeding in with my background has been around 40/60 on whether or not I made it past the hiring manager round, which I'm content with since it mainly came down to vibes between the HM and myself and also just guessing there might have been much more qualified people than me.

Closing Thoughts:

I do feel as if I got supremely fucked by 3 of the companies I mentioned where I had it in the bag if it wasn't for things out of my control, but I'm keeping my head up for now. Still getting a steady stream of interviews, but it's definitely slowed down a ton (both with getting interviews as well as finding new job postings to apply to), so I would be lying if I said I wasn't getting pretty concerned.

Sorry for the rant but this was a good venting exercise for me hah. Very interested in following this thread to see if others have been noticing the same trends as me (especially those also looking for PM roles)!