Rejected by Facebook

[NOTE: A month ago I wrote an article explaining that I would be applying to Facebook. You can read that article here: https://dev.to/bytebodger/applying-to-facebook-dan]

So... I'm no longer "Applying to Facebook". Or, to put it in more explicit terms, I'm no longer being considered by Facebook. For those who read the first article, this won't come as a huge surprise to you. I was very open about the fact that I did not expect to be hired by them.

However, the exact manner in which I was eliminated was, umm... interesting. So what happened??

A Quick Synopsis

Facebook reached out to me on LinkedIn about five weeks ago. It was a standard ping from one of their internal recruiters - it's not like I was being pursued by one of their executives to fill a specific role. There wasn't anything overtly "special" about my resume or their desire to talk to me. I was just someone who came up on their radar.

After a brief call with the recruiter, they asked me to send them an updated copy of my resume. The first thing I did was to write the first article (linked above). Quite frankly, I just thought it would be interesting content for the Dev.to crowd. The second thing I did was to spend a little more than a week standing up a new resume site. If you're interested, you can see that site here: https://adamdavis.codes.

This may sound like a strange reaction on my part. After all, why wouldn't I just manually update a resume and send it to them? Well... for some time now I've been a little exasperated whenever a recruiter - calling about a job that I may not even be interested in - asks me to update my resume and send it to them. I mean... I'm a programmer, right? Wouldn't it be more efficient just to create a resume site that I rarely need to update? And then to send that link to any recruiter who wants my CV? So that's what I did. And once the site was live, I sent the recruiter the link to https://adamdavis.codes - and waited.

I actually didn't hear back from them for almost three weeks. Not that this was bothering me at all. I just figured that, when they wanted to get back to me, they would. Or maybe they wouldn't get back to me at all? Who knows?? The point is that I wasn't exactly stressing about it.

But late last week, I did indeed receive a reply from the Facebook recruiter. Here's the pertinent quote from that email:

My sincerest apologies on the delay in providing you an update. As promised, I have shared your resume link with our team and unfortunately I have to inform you that we have decided we will not be moving forward with your application at this time and I am not able to provide any specific feedback. For what it’s worth, I’d normally inform over the phone but I feel terrible for how long we’ve kept you waiting so I wanted to let you know as soon as I found out.

And there you have it. I'm a Facebook reject!!!

If it's not already clear, I wasn't exactly crestfallen. In fact, when I read the response above, I literally laughed out loud. I really only applied because I thought it would make for interesting content - taking you along on the ride until I was ultimately eliminated.

I must admit that I thought I'd make it at least a little bit further in the process. I figured that I'd at least, you know, have the honor of failing a coding test or bombing a developer interview. Basically... I fell down in the starter's block.

The rejection itself was completely expected. But the nature in which I was eliminated felt strange. So... what happened???

Following the Clues

Obviously, there's no way to know exactly why I was eliminated. And Facebook is under no obligation to tell me. But we can do a little... surmising.

Remember when I said that I didn't send them an updated resume, but instead sent them a link to my new resume site?? It's possible that this minor difference - between what they requested and what I provided - was enough for them to move onward. I don't honestly believe this to be the case, but it's at least theoretically possible.

Far more likely is that someone at Facebook looked at my resume site - and didn't appreciate what they saw. You see, some of my resume site is written with the same "spiciness" that I bring to these articles. And some people - especially, some people who are evaluating candidates - don't much appreciate that.

If I had an agent, he'd probably beg me to change the verbiage on my resume site. But that verbiage serves a purpose. Specifically, it's designed to repel those employers who are looking for hoop-jumpers. Cuz I don't own any hoops. And I don't jump through anyone else's hoops.

It's also possible that my rejection had nothing to do with anything on my resume - and everything to do with something that's linked to on my resume site. You see, my resume site has a feed that shows all of my Dev.to articles. And one of my recent articles was about the process of applying to Facebook.

Someone at Facebook may not have appreciated the fact that I was openly talking about the process. More likely, someone at Facebook maybe didn't appreciate the fact that I'd written about the folly of using concepts like .call() and .apply() as litmus tests in a tech interview. After all, they told me that these would be important concepts in the initial interviews - and then I turned around and wrote a blog about how stupid I thought this was.

Or maybe it wasn't even my "Applying to Facebook" article that put them off? Maybe they didn't like something else that I wrote about on Dev.to? Or maybe they looked at my pic and realized that I'm far-short of handsome? Or maybe they decided that hiring cranky old guys isn't always the best strategy in Silicon Valley? Who knows? Who cares???

Mysteries Are OK

Ultimately, I'll never know exactly why they cut the process so short. And that's just fine. I had honestly hoped to turn it into a few more articles - but I can't control that. If nothing else, it was interesting. And despite the ancient Chinese curse (May you live in interesting times.), "interesting" isn't always a bad thing.

Onward, I go!

Comments

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

To be clear, I'm not sure if "I am not able to provide any specific feedback" is really that different than "I don't WANT to give any feedback". And also, the "assessment" period between me-and-FB was so brief as to be almost a non-entity. So I understand why they're not gonna give me any feedback. I really do. I didn't actually interview with them. I didn't take any of their tests. Despite the fact that they reached out to me, they eliminated me literally before any real sorta evaluation could happen. So I fully understand why they wouldn't give me any real feedback. It's kinda like when you're looking at someone in the club and you think, "Yeah... no. I'm not gonna talk to them." Once that happens, of course you don't walk up to them and explain why you won't talk to them. You just move on. I get that.

[Ben Sinclair]

Mm, "I am not able to" can mean that they usually do if they can, but that their client (Facebook) don't want them to. I think that's perfectly possible.

[James Thomson]

Wouldn't it be more efficient just to create a resume site that I rarely need to update? And then to send that link to any recruiter who wants my CV? So that's what I did.

One suggestion... work on a print friendly version of your resume. You're right in the sense that we should just have digital resumes, BUT recruiters, HR, managers, etc. love to pass around PDFs and have something they can quickly reference and print when/if they meet with you. Imagine sifting through hundreds of resumes and having to go to applicants websites to see if they even fit the job - these get weeded out pretty quickly. It's like receiving a word doc instead of a PDF, it doesn't really reflect highly especially in our industry.

Have a look at my resume: jamesthomson.dev/experience. Not saying it's the gold standard, but I've tried to lay it out to be easy to quickly consume and if you CMD+P you get a nice print friendly version that's max 2 pages.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

The first two questions in my FAQ specifically address this. I purposely worked to make the resume page print-friendly.

[paulokoelio]

It may be surprisingly but very often it is a problem for them just to download a pdf file by link, they want you exactly TO SEND pdf file. From my real life.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

I understand that. But it still doesn't mean that I feel compelled to cater to those who can't figure out how to download or print from the web.

[John Mendez]

I was on board with you until this comment.....

You see.....they are busy people too. They have deadlines and families just like you do. And so they created a system that streamlines their duties. You don't have to like it. But I'm sure you wouldn't like an outside party determining how you do your job either.

Yet you were the one who chose to disregard their ask, and imposed upon them a different workflow.

So it's less about catering to someone's ignorance and/or laziness, and more about respecting their needs as an autonomous person.

This gives the impression that you may only be comfortable doing things your way, and may be difficult to work with. You may very well be fine with the outcome, but it's not fair to blame them or paint them negatively because of your choices.

They could have very likely been interested, and the process may have been less of a shibbolet than you assumed. And because it's all team dependent, some people are only asked fizz buzz and/or leetcode easy. Both of which I'm sure you could handle since they only test problem solving ability.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

You seem to be implying that I have some sort of malice toward such people, but I don't. If they can't/won't download or print my CV off the web, that's fine. Doesn't mean I want to work with them. But it's fine. It's their process and they can define it however they want. I totally get that. But every hoop that you ask your candidates to jump through - big or small - will ultimately eliminate some of those candidates. My point is that sometimes you're eliminating high-value candidates who simply can't be bothered.

It helps here to remember the power dynamics involved. It's probably been 20 years since I applied for any job. Every job I've had has occurred because they reached out to me. Maybe that sounds arrogant, but it's the plain truth.

During those times in my life when I truly needed a job, I jumped through every hoop they put in front of me. I'm privileged enough now (I can wholeheartedly acknowledge it) that I almost never need to pursue any job. So, no, I'm not going to reformat my resume just because it doesn't fit neatly into some recruiter's process.

I'm also old enough, and experienced enough, to understand what requirements are there for a legitimate purpose - and which ones are there because someone wants to see all the dots on their screen line up in a neat row.

For example, if they ask me to take a drug test as a precondition of employment, that's a pretty significant hoop. And I'll jump through it every time. Because I understand what the requirement accomplishes. They want a drug-free workplace. I get that. And there's really no way to ensure that unless I agree to take the drug test. So I'll do it.

If they want me to implement their ESLint standards in all my code, of course I'll do it. It serves a legitimate purpose. And if I ignore it or try to implement my own standard, that's pretty much the definition of someone who's not a "team player".

But if their requirement is that I reformat my resume into a .docx format and that I change the font to Comic Sans, then, no - I'm not going to do that. It serves no purpose other than to make them feel good about the idea that I've properly conformed. If that eliminates me from contention, then I honestly couldn't care less. And it's probably a good indication that it's not the type of organization that I'd like to work for anyway.

[John Mendez]

It's their process and they can define it however they want. I totally get that.

They did. And you could have graciously declined. Instead you decided to still apply, but demand that they bend to your process. This to me is extremely inconsiderate of the recruiter's time. Again, they also have a job to execute and family to tend to. The processes they require were set by the departments they work with. And they get rated on applicants hired, not applicants contacted.

I'm totally on board that the tech hiring process is broken. But asking for a formatted resume isn't where.

But if their requirement is that I reformat my resume into a .docx format and that I change the font to Comic Sans, then, no - I'm not going to do that. It serves no purpose other than to make them feel good about the idea that I've properly conformed.

You seem to assume the recruiters set the standards. You also assume they can force the tools they use to acquiesce to your whims.

Pdfs render better and more consistently than docx. Should they be forced to correct the rendering in their machine just to read your resume?

Did you know that comic sans is easier to read for dyslexics? Should a dyslexic hiring manager understand that you've been in this game too long for such "hoops"?

Asking for a formatted resume has nothing to do with making you feel less than.

And it's probably a good indication that it's not the type of organization that I'd like to work for anyway.

Completely agree. And it was evident from the moment they asked for a formatted resume, that you didn't wish to oblige with.

Yet again, you decided to continue with the process. No one forced you. And you even stated that you felt you would "get the honor" to be rejected during other stages of the process.

I'll repeat, the hiring process is broken. But it's not by asking for a formatted resume. I was hoping to read about how it's actually broken, not about how you feel above sending your info in the format they ask. And that's where you lost me.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

🙌 🙌 🙌 Alright, man. You win. Peace. 🙌 🙌 🙌

[Harsh Rathod]

Please help, I also want to make my resume: harshrathod.dev/static/docs/resume... print-friendly. What should I do?

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

There are varying opinions about what exactly constitutes "print-friendly". But this is what I specifically did on mine that I believe helps:

1. Responsive design is generally a must. Because the whole point of responsive design is to gracefully accommodate varying (and potentially unknown-at-programming-time) viewports. So if you're incorporating responsive design, you're probably already a long way toward having something that's reasonably "print-friendly".
2. Make minimal use of colors - especially, background colors. They can make things unreadable when you print.
3. This is even more important for background images.
4. If you still feel compelled to use various colors and images (really, just... don't), you also need to understand that there is no way to actually control whether the user will actually print those out. That's entirely controlled by the print settings on the client, and you can't force such things into the print view.
5. Use the CSS page break properties to ensure that there aren't any nasty/unnatural page breaks when you go into print view. Although you can't control the exact dimensions that someone else will use when printing your page, you can get a pretty good view for how most people will see it printed by simply pulling up your own page in print-preview mode.
6. Use CSS @media to hide items that shouldn't be there in the print view. There can be a lot of detritus on the page that looks fine in the browser, but just doesn't work right in print view. For example, on my page, I have that little text effect that keeps spelling out different titles after my name. But in print view, this just freezes at some point, and that frozen text looks illogical. So I hide that entirely in print view. You can do that like this:

@media print {
    .hidden-print {
        display: none !important;
    }
}

Then, whenever you want something to be hidden in the print view, you just add the hidden-print class to the element.

I don't think this is an exhaustive list, but these things go a long way toward making your content "print-friendly".

[Harsh Rathod]

Thanks, Adam and James for your feedback. I want to convert my pdf resume to a "print-friendly" responsive HTML page. The problem with the pdf file is that it downloads first and then loads in the browser which then shows it to the viewer and by that time 2 to 3+ seconds pass away. So having a print-friendly resume as you people have will be good.

[James Thomson]

In terms of print-friendliness I would say that it already is. It only uses 1 page and has minimal colour.

[𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️]

Something about the alignment of this text just frustrates me the longer I look at it. I can't exactly say how it should be, but this just seems... wrong?

[Andrew Wooldridge]

Yes you want the baseline of the Davis to align with the baseline of Senior.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

Hahaha, well... the "point" of that alignment is that - the name is primary, and the routinely-updating titles are secondary. But I'm not saying that I can't understand your point.

[Davide de Paolis]

recently i was contacted ( on linkedin) by a recruiter who asked me to send her a pdf of my resume, which I don't update since I joined my current company - 8 years ago - while linkedin is updated and full of any useful info they might need. so she could just use that .
She replied that they absolutely needed a pdf for their database or sort of stuff they use... :facepalm

[Davide de Paolis]

another reason ( besides having sent them a link instead of your resume) could be simply that .. well.. you are aehm.. old...
a couple of years ago ( when i was already over 40) i was contacted by another recruiter on Linkedin ( where there is no year of birth, but you can make the math from the year i finished highschool..) and after 2 phonecalls and approximately almost 90 minutes of pre-interview, he asks my age and then imbarassed tells me, oh no sorry.. that start-up has a hard limit of 35 yo to new hires... :facepalm

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

That's very interesting to hear you explain it like that. In the US, it's technically illegal to discriminate based on someone being too old (it is legal to discriminate based on someone being too young - e.g., you can say that candidates must be X age-or-older to apply). Of course, such discrimination happens all the time. But the companies won't flat-out tell you that you're being eliminated due to being too old. Because admitting such would make them liable to a civil suit.

[Manuel Velázquez]

Hence the "I am unable to provide any specific feedback". There is no logic in making it illegal to discriminate on old age (or gender, race, etc.) but allowing employers to not disclose the reasons why they reject someone.

[Davide de Paolis]

exactly. the only reason why they don't provide feedback is that most of the time they might get into discrimination troubles..

[Davide de Paolis]

sure. probably i could. i guess the recruiter was just stupid... but didn't want to be bothered. he contacted me, and he made me already waste enough time. and anyway, I can understand that a startup where the Founder is probably in the early 30s and most employes are enthusiastic hipsters just out of college, a 40years old grumpy senior engineer could be not that a great culture fit ( you also explained it quite good in one of your posts), the thing is.. you can decide AFTER you interviewed me not just cut out the process like that. if you are so strict and dumb, then I don't work to work there. thanks

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

The PDF thing really irks me sometimes. I know I shouldn't get worked up about it, but I still do. It's such a clear-and-obvious example of hoop-jumping just to comply with someone else's default, mindless process.

On one hand, if I was truly in need of a job, or if I desperately wanted to work for this one specific company, I suppose it's natural to think that I'd update and reformat my resume in whatever manner they requested. On the other hand, these interactions almost always occur after they've reached out - to me.

[Davide de Paolis]

yes. that's the point. I was not looking for a job. the recruiter contacted me, they contact me every week, just for their stupid database or introductory chats.. some ask for the pdf, some ask for their own form... ain't got no time for that!

[Ryan Latta]

Something that I've become more aware of over the years are the laws in play when hiring candidates.

Since almost nobody (aside from HR) is ever trained to interview anyone or knows those laws, they are very easily broken.

Not providing feedback is an easy position companies can take that protects them from saying something about the interview that can get used against them.

I'm not saying that's what happened in this specific case, but a common reason why it's really hard to get feedback in an interview process.

[Shaquil Maria]

As a junior dev I always wondered why some recruiters just say that they can't give feedback or straight up don't get back at you. Like what is the mystery you want to hide?

Some times it just keeps you wondering why, but I guess you are right,

"interesting" isn't always a bad thing.

Let's see what's the next interesting thing that happens that you can write about.👊

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

Yeah. But as I indicated in my response to Amelia, I actually get their lack of detail. Sometimes, you just take a slighty deeper look at someone and go, "Umm... no. Not gonna pursue that any further." And you know what??? I'm fine with that.

All that being said, I love the Linkin Park reference!!!

[Lorenzo]

youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4, musical culture.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

Oh, I totally agree with that! And I've actually written other pieces on this site about the galling lack of feedback that sometimes occurs when candidates are asked to jump through hoops - but then they are summarily... dismissed.

[Thorsten Hirsch]

Well, it's easy to find reasons for the rejection in your articles. Don't get me wrong - I really like what you write, but from the perspective of a recruiter, who's just browsing through them superficially, there are many problematic things one can find:

• you're an impostor (you say so yourself)
• you say that it's okay to lie to advance your career
• something masturbatory
• you don't really know big-o (you say so yourself)
• you might have pretty strong opinions

All these things are linked on your CV page, so it's easy to come to the wrong conclusions about you.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

Yep. You'll get no argument from me there. If you just do a cursory glance through my articles (especially if all you do is read the titles), it's easy to form a very inaccurate impression of me. I get that. Hell - even if you read every single one of my articles and you have a perfectly accurate impression of me, you may still not want to consider me for any position at all in your company. I totally get that as well.

That's why this article, unlike so many of my others, was not chuck full of snark or sarcasm. I'm not mad - not even a little bit - about being eliminated from FB. In fact, part of the reason that I put this stuff out there is because I'd love for people remove me from consideration before we go through all the hassle of a long interview process or, even worse, an ill-fitting hire.

It'd be like if I'm on a dating app, and fishing is really important to me, so I put fishing front-and-center in my profile. Now, some people might say, "Well, some women don't like fishing - and they don't want to be with a man who's really into fishing. So you should probably remove that item from your profile." But my reply would be, "Heck no. I want that item featured prominently on my profile, because if it's really so important to me, then it's much better not to waste her time, or mine."

[James Linden]

I was rejected by FB twice last year after a couple of actual interview steps. For the second time, the feedback they gave me was that my skills on [insert primary job responsibility at current job] was lacking. I literally laughed on the phone with the FB recruiter. Double irony - I didn't apply either time. They came to me.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

This really illustrates the downside of wanting/expecting feedback - because even when you do get feedback, it can often be bad, useless, or comically inaccurate. There are a lotta things that I know I'm "weak" in. And if one of those so-called weaknesses were called out in the feedback, I'd truly just shrug and move on. But I've had interviews before where, after being eliminated, they told me that I was "weak" in some area - some area that is literally one of my strongest skills. And like you, I laughed out loud.

Unfortunately, I usually know why someone has tried to paint one of my strongest skills as being "weak": Because they have some litmus test in that area with which I wasn't familiar. And when I didn't have that litmus test in my back pocket, they wrote me off as being "weak" in that area.

A great example of this happened the other day during a different interview (not for FB). I was coding stuff with one of their devs and I wrote a looped set of asynchronous Axios calls to fetch a series of data. The interviewer pointed out that my approach would've probably been better if I'd used Promise.all. And he was right. I admitted that I knew about Promise.all but I just haven't made myself familiar-enough with it and I need to brush up on it.

In this particular incident, the guy seemed cool and I don't think he treated it as any kinda disqualifying factor. This was probably helped by the fact that he seemed to like the rest of my solution. But in other situations, with other evaluators, not only would you be eliminated, but they'd also mark you down as being "weak" with asynchronous calls, or even, "weak" with JavaScript overall.

[Richard Griffiths]

Love this.

I get emails from certain coder marketing folks who keep going on about interviewing for the Big ones (Facebook, Google, Amazon etc) and after each email, marketing the latest how to pass X book, I'm more and more entrenched in the idea I'd never ever want to be employed by these companies.

To have entire books and sites devoted to passing these companies code interviews seems bonkers.

So, is not just me lol.

I'd much rather work with real small companies who then work with small to medium business's. Less bureaucracy, bs and nonsense.

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

Amen to that!