I applied online first. It took a week and nothing happened. Accidentally I saw a connection of mine on Linkedin sharing the same job ad from the hiring manager. I used that and managed to get to the hiring manager directly. While we were discussing a few things, literally at the same time, I got an auto mail from a recruiter that they found a person and were no longer interviewing. Quite strange I thought since my profile and resume matched as much as to get to at least a screening call. But then I thought .. who would know what their criteria were.
Anyway, a couple of excuses from the hiring manager and the recruiters for the misunderstanding and I managed to land in a call with the hiring manager. It was great. A great guy, knew his stuff, all went well. Obviously he thought so too since I got a follow-up email from the recruiters to talk to another guy in a week's time. The focus of the call would have been "strategy". I didn't care to ask what exactly was meant by "strategy" since the only thing I could think of, given the position I was applying for, was strategy for the product that I was supposed to be a leading PM for. But, I was wrong. The second interview with a guy at the same level as the hiring manager, but on a different product, was totally different. Strategy was a topic but rather general strategy on how I select which products to work on. Anyway, I was a bit disappointed since I had put some efforts to think about particular details about the product strategy for what I was applying.
I got an email letting me know they have a better match and thank you notes along with it.
All in all, the general feedback from applying and interviewing was ok, but recruiters were incompetent and misled me in preparing for the interview. Also, it's worth calling a candidate in person when he progresses with the interviews rather than send a mail template with the click of a button.