I spoke with the recruiter and then had a follow-up interview with two people from the Product team. The recruiter said there would be a design task, which was a red flag and almost made me withdraw my application. However, it turned out they just wanted me to present a case study of one of my past projects, so it was very misleading.
I came prepared to spend the majority of the interview presenting my work and then ask & answer any follow-up questions. From the start, the person conducting the interview set 'expectations' to go through my work as soon as possible, making me feel uncomfortable - not the best start! Both interviewers seemed distracted and didn't pay too much attention to the presentation.
Then the interrogation started. The person running the interview was abrasive and quite aggressive. I was bombarded with tricky questions. Some were more for a Product Manager than a Product Designer; others were completely irrelevant, just to throw me off. More and more into the interview, it was clear they were looking for a UX Researcher, not a Product Designer.
They are looking for someone to do a job of at least 3 people - to clean up after previous Product Designers, to be a UX researcher (do usability testing every week) and to help with the Ways of Working between Designers and Developers (so far it has been Dev-led).
I found it extremely unfair, especially that the salary range for this role was only £40.000-£50.000. It's way too low for the amount of work and the immense pressure this person would be under. It was apparent that the company has low UX maturity. Even the people interviewing me were there temporarily and seemed they lacked practical experience. Crunch isn't valuing the Product Design so I don't recommend interviewing there.