[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/a...
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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.
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.
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.
The first two questions in my FAQ specifically address this. I purposely worked to make the resume page print-friendly.
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.
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.
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.
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
.docxformat 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.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.
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.
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.
π π π Alright, man. You win. Peace. π π π
Please help, I also want to make my resume: harshrathod.dev/static/docs/resume... print-friendly. What should I do?
There are varying opinions about what exactly constitutes "print-friendly". But this is what I specifically did on mine that I believe helps:
@mediato 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:Then, whenever you want something to be hidden in the print view, you just add the
hidden-printclass 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".
In terms of print-friendliness I would say that it already is. It only uses 1 page and has minimal colour.
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.
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?
Yes you want the baseline of the Davis to align with the baseline of Senior.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
exactly. the only reason why they don't provide feedback is that most of the time they might get into discrimination troubles..
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
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.
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!
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.
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,
Let's see what's the next interesting thing that happens that you can write about.π
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!!!
youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4, musical culture.
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:
All these things are linked on your CV page, so it's easy to come to the wrong conclusions about you.
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."
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.
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.
Amen to that!
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.
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 aboutPromise.allbut 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.
Take it as divine intervention from the universe. You do not want to work for Facebook. Instead, there are other up and coming social media platforms that need great engineers like Minds.com.
As there's been no formal interview, I doubt recuiter would've had any constructive feedback to give. They have likely just found another person who looked better on paper and moved ahead with them.
A legitimate cause of rejection reason can be that you wrote in your resume you are a remote worker, and remote was in bold.
Some companies prefer candidates that work in office.
I was rejected for a position on Atlassian for that reason, as they didn't offer a remote position, instead I was asked to move to Australia.
I was sad for that, because the position offered was really interesting, but I really can't move.
I agree, but I don't believe that had anything to do with this scenario. I didn't spell it out in the article, but before I sent them the link to my resume site, I had one of those standard "intro calls" with the FB recruiter. She told me, in very broad terms, about the roles they were looking to fill, which mapped well to my skillset (which is why they'd reached out). In that same call, I was very explicit in asking if this was a 100%-remote opportunity. And she confirmed that it was.
Ok, my 2 cents. I think you are way overthinking this (thatβs our job as coders and makes us good at it). Itβs more than likely that you were just not a fit fit the job you were being considered for, but there are likely lots of other jobs at Facebook you would be a fit for. You should think of this not as being rejected by Facebook, but from being rejected from a particular job at Facebook.
Iβve briefly looked at some of your posts and your resume site. Nothing negative at all there. If I were your PR person, Iβd say change nothing, and if you want a FAANG job, keep trying and youβll get one.
Sorry if this sounds like man-splaining. Not my intent.
Congratulations! No really, I think you should be celebrating being unsuitable for this company.
Call people on their bs seems like a good trait to me:-)
Hahaha - thanks!
maybe they wanted someone to jump trough the hoops, good on you Sir for not doing such silly things... :) it is considered a prestige job but for those who jump hoops the best imo . on a side note i like reading your articles and learned a lot from the craft by your perspectives.
One of my last interview:
HR: "You've a great profile but... no. But I would be super happy to provide feedback!"
Me: "Sad. But I love feedback!"
One week later
HR: "Well it's not easy to give feedback by email. But here's an affiliate link where you can subscribe to this fantastic job platform."
Another one:
HR: "We can't take you but I can give you feedback!"
Me: "Sad. But I love feedback!"
Several days later
HR: "I have FEEDBACK! Click on the link!"
Me: "But it redirects me to a website where I need to sign in and there is no sign up..."
HR became a GHOST
I could write a book. Hiring is so broken in
startupsFAANGtech. In dozen+ of interviews, I managed to have exactly 0 feedback.Yep moved to Seattle 3 yrs ago to get a tech job, and I'm still looking. I can't tell you how many times I have been ghosted for potential jobs, once the employer (or recruiter) finds out my age. Never get passed the phone interview.
Qualifications don't matter, social "fit" does. If your over 50 forget about getting on at a startup, if you have consider yourself lucky.
The tech industry does not like Senior software developers, or more precisely they don't like Seniors who write software.
And yet you read all these news articles about how there is a shortage of IT talent.
And I'm still looking.
I have feeling applying for a job is gambling. You can be the best person for that position but what if lead dev (or someone who make decisions) just have a bad day or maybe they have just found someone else.
In my opinion if employer doesn't exlpain rejection you shouldn't really care about it. You did your best, that is what really matter.
Totally agree. I've come to view every interview/opportunity as a toss of the dice. Whether the process leads to an offer - or to rejection - often has little connection to your skills.
IMHO, it's their loss they didn't spend enough time researching you, your background, and praise your pretty awesome resume website. The times when I was a hiring manager I looked at more than empirical data to evaluate candidates - aptitude, attitude, etc.
These big FANG companies have a formula and a pipeline for hiring. I was rejected by Amazon and learned a lot from the process. Kudos to you for writing it all up. I enjoyed reading it.
I honestly think they treated you unfairly for not giving specific reason - IMHO, for some people, a rejection feedback is making them better in their career. But, I expected them to! And all the others corporate giants out there.
The things I learned from applying (or even recruited) by tech giants, is to never expect too much. And just spend the exact "fun" time to deliver their requests such as resume or test practices, without really breaking a sweat.
If youβre a web dev, and you insist on submitting a website rather than a conventional resumΓ©, you should make sure that it at least performs well.
lighthouse-dot-webdotdevsite.appsp...
Maybe Iβm missing something, but a 42 on performance isnβt really a great sign.
I just love how someone pulls up their own tool-of-choice, sees that the site responded wonderfully on 3-out-of-4 metrics, and then implies that I must not be a "web dev" if the site didn't ace all 4. This is so perfectly indicative of what I see from sooooooo many other devs.
While I care just as much about performance as any web dev (although... I guess I'm not one), I can't really validate this tool's performance metrics. It claims that TTI is a full 7.5 seconds. And, I'm sorry (not sorry), but that's just not accurate. There's nothing on that page that requires anywhere near a 7.5-second wait before you can interact with it.
I just pulled the page up on GTmetrix, which shows a TTI of 1.7 seconds. Where in the heck Lighthouse gets 7.5 seconds from, I'll never know. Nor do I particularly care.
I do notice that, on the various performance reports from multiple sites, everything is basically pushed up by 2 seconds, because there's a 2-second fade-in on the page. I could remove that, just to make someone satisfied that I'm actually a web dev. But, umm... nope.
The simple fact is that most of the primary optimizations you need to do to a base React site to get it run blazingly fast require you to set up a custom pipeline on your own server. For example, you can run the app through a static site generator, but that's not going to happen while the site is hosted on AWS's Amplify. I'm not going to configure (and pay for) a custom EC2 instance just so I can make someone feel better about a
42on Lighthouse.FWIW, I just ran Lighthouse in the browser, and it gives adamdavis.code/home a performance score of
90on desktop with a TTI of 0.6 seconds. On mobile, it gives a performance score of64- not amazing, but a lot better than42. In that report, it still shows the mobile TTI as 5.9 seconds - which, quite frankly, doesn't really make much sense.Please update your portfolio site
π π π
I'm jumpin in this without readin all the comments cuz if its already been said, its a point that can definately be said again..
d3=@cΓͺ300% @#$&*()'"%-+=/;:,.Β£β¬Β₯_^[]{}Β§|~β¦<>!?
so i think that we got a great result here! the fact that they will waste your time and give sound excuses promptly via email to divert any attention drawn to their internal process concludes that they have soooo much to hide that the giants unlimited resources within a relaxed 3 weeks couldnt come up with a way to answer you that protects some core components of their brand and its rediculous ambition.
I've watched alot of TV, there are some pretty creative story spinners out there and so your tellin me the book doesnt employ any? they must be tied up with shredding documents and destroying hard drives..
im gonna stop now because it really means nothing except i would probably deliver a broken nose if i ever actually met somebody that works for facebook..
i would like to note that the views and opinions expressed by me are not mine and me doesnt take any responsibility for lack of interest causing you to not read this far.
Sir ,I do share your discontent for not being lucky enough to get a job at Facebook and I do appreciate your taking time and pain to make an article out of it.Truly I am sorry.π£
And to be honest with you ,it is not worth trying to figure out why your candidacy at that so called big tech company did not pass through .
The truth is that the process of recruiting is not only unfair and illogical but most of so called recruiters lack tragically of any competence of discovering the true potentialities of those they interview.
Do think about interviews you have been through and try to remember what your interviewers qualifications were.
Most of theirs were nothing but those related to human resources realm.
Can you image what the coding interview run by an artist would be ?
Just a total waste of time and failure.
It should be done by those earned expertise by coding and are able to successfully discover the true potentialities of of the interviewee.
That is why many company are still recruiting expecting to find talents recruited by unqualified recruiters with biased coding challenges.
It just does not work.
To end this ,just comfort yourself with the fact your rejection has nothing to do with your skills or your resume content .
And never waste your time to understand why you have been rejected.
Truly I will urge myself to interview someone like you that send me the link of his resume site :It is not only a showcase of skills but creativity .
Even if I do know you enough ,I am 100% sure that you do have enough skills set to work for any big tech company and you will have a shining careers.
Just do not give up and keep thriving your skills.π
I truly appreciate your reply! π π π
Hi Adam, I have decided to take part in this discussion because nobody said this and I find FB way of discussion RUDE.
All in all and whatever the reason was would not really touch me but hey, saying about the phone feedback and not giving any? Really? Rejection is fine but saying that normally they would have reached you is (at least for me) saying, that I am being punished for something and thats on purpose they have decided to not call me specifically. I don't like companies which act like that.
You sound like the enterprising kind of person that wouldn't be a good fit at Facebook... I'd be disappointed to see your talents wasted there
you know they have to adopt this "passive-aggressive" style :D
Great article! I like your site by the way
Share code you CV?
My resume site has links to all of my GitHub repos and NPM packages
This was an interesting read.
"But I'm a coder, and there's nothing in your office that's going to make me a more efficient coder."
I will definitely add that into my future CV
I have literally nothing to say other than the following: your articles are fun to read. Glad to have stumbled upon this account.
Hehehe - that's some of the best feedback I could possibly get. Thank you!
The period is not an ASCII-standard period.
Hey Mate! Love your content, could you post something along the lines of maintaining a good github profile?
You will get more better opportunities than Facebook!