Product Managers - Beware of assignments in your hiring process

I've had absolutely horrible hiring experiences with two major product based companies in Delhi NCR region.

Both of them had unusually high number of rounds in the process, both asked me to make very elaborate assignments as a part of their process, and both ghosted me after that.

Company 1: B2B SaaS

• Made me go through 4 rounds of interviews
• Two of which taken by folks with lesser YoE than me
• After 4th round, I was asked to submit a 30 page assignment defining ICP, vision, GTM, solutions, risk mitigations, pricing, vibecoded prototypes for one of their upcoming products
• Then after I submitted the assignment, I got no response for days
• After repeated follow ups from HR, I was told there's a hiring freeze
• Two days later, the same role got posted again on LinkedIn
• Even the quality of interviews were mid at best - None of the interviewers actually grasped the context of my projects and the case studies were very entry level

Company 2: B2B2C startup

• Round 1 went pretty good
• Was asked to submit an assignment - open ended prompt, required me to do deep user research, talk to users, define user personas, identify problem statements, solutions, make vibecoded prototypes, and everything else
• Recommend three key features, got assignment selected
• Next round was assignment presentation, where interviewer had lesser relevant work ex than me
• Starts debating on things beyond the scope of assignment
• But later says that the features you recommended is something they're building currently, so great validation, great thinking and what not
• Few days later, when I asked for updates, HR says they're rejecting me because, guess what?: Assignment wasn't up to the mark

Like bro, then why didn't you reject me after the assignment submission?

I think it's a common trend with a lot of companies to throw open ended assignments at the candidates for the projects they're building currently and steal ideas. Honestly, the market is beyond fucked for PMs right now. Every company is playing safe and want bottom line improvements over new PLG drivers.

PMs - If you find such assignments in your hiring process - RUN. Any good product team worth it's while can judge you on the basis of interviews. Even if there are assignments, there has to be a very specific prompt, a defined scope, and hopefully not on a project that the company is working on currently.