We are the Facebook Recruiting team. AMAA - Ask our Team Almost Anything

What sort of information do you mine from a serious applicants personal Facebook profile?

We take privacy very seriously at Facebook and no applicants profile is accessed beyond what any other user would be able to publicly view.

If it got me a good job at Facebook, I honestly wouldn't mind.

we wouldn't mind either - given we have alot of open roles. Apply for the ones you are most passionate about

Would Facebook hire someone w/o a college degree? I'm 15 and I've been programming for 8 years, and I'm fluent in 6 programming languages and I know 7 others fairly well. However, school isn't really going well for me and I'm doubtful that I'll even be able to attend college (I have a 3.2 atm). Would Facebook or other big tech companies consider hiring me?

it would we weird for us to require a college degree (see Zuck). if you can build awesome stuff and have big impact, that's all we're really looking for.

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Our biz/finance roles have more requirements in terms of training, usually that means some kind of degree or certificate program. if not a degree, probably some decent amount of track record is needed

Okay thank you. What kind of stuff would be helpful to have if I didn't have a degree? Would certifications in different languages help? I know I should get a GitHub set up.

Would it be remotely possible for me to get a job straight out of high school if I had sufficient experience?

links to stuff you've built or your github commits are great. we're not language specific - as long as you can write code and learn new languages. In an interview, we'd ask you your preferred language and have you to go the whiteboard and code in that.

What is the corporate culture of Facebook like? Do they offer relocation to all jobs, or only the more senior level?

We're a culture of builders... of hackers. We don't just expect our engineers to move fast and ship stuff, but everyone in focused on building product and services that create a more open and connected world.

Relocation is provided for everyone for any full time or intern position.

What's the dental insurance situation like?

we provide dental insurance, but the exact coverage varies by country

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10151317682447200

How much emphasis do you put on GPA as opposed to out of the classroom type work?

I have always been a big believer in education outside the classroom through internships and the like.

Do you weigh one more heavily than the other?

We look at the whole candidate package - GPA is one signal but never the only signal. Some candidates do well in school and well in our interview process, and get hired. Some have been coding for years before school and work on tons of outside projects and don't make school/grades a priority. People who can display their actual skills by building real things beyond class projects are very frequently the stronger candidates. Ultimately, we want to hire people that build amazing things and push technologies to new heights.

Is Facebook a welcoming environment for trans people? Are there specific policies, and is there health coverage? What about for LGBT people in general?

Our whole philosophy is about being your authentic self at work--last year we even had over 400 employees march in SF Pride. For trans employees we have gender neutral bathrooms and our insurance policy covers gender reassignment surgery as well. You'd find us very welcoming.

Why would Facebook need a recruiting team in the first place? AKA What do you actually do?

we need the best talent globally to help build new products to serve our 1B+ users - that takes a lot of work. we work closely with teams and hiring managers to identify what they need and help them go out and get it. Our hiring managers know that recruiting is their responsibility but sometimes they need help to identify what they need and where to find it.

What special perks do employees get?

our perks approach is to provide the benefits that most allow people to focus on their work and have impact. things like food, transportation, small teams, laundry, healthcare, flexible hours, it resources/equipment, connectivity are a priority for us.

Won't you hire a chemical engineer? You know, for shits and giggles?

We like to shit and giggle here - so please do send via the career site

Any research thrusts into the hardware realm?

Definitely! Facebook actually custom designs and builds the hardware that goes into our data centers, so research and ingenuity are imperative as we continue to scale out our infrastructure. The designs are open-sourced, and can be viewed here: http://www.opencompute.org/

It seems it is a trend in tech companies to create an all inclusive environment geared towards young engineers. Free breakfast, lunch, and dinners. Laundry service. Ground transportation to and from work. Pool tables and lounge rooms.

While this appeals to a younger person without as many family obligations and who doesn't mind living 3/4 of their day at a campus, what kind of perks do you make to middle age tech people? Someone who has children and a spouse who isn't attracted to eating dinner and playing some ping pong at campus at 8pm on a Tuesday?

(FB Employee here) I work at FB and I have 3 kids.

Facebook is very generous when it comes to parental perks IMO. 4 months parental leave on a new arrivals, Baby Cash / Allowance for baby-related purchases and Dependent Care FSA to help pay for day care. They also provide a free subscription to Care.com. The environment, in general, tends to be flexible to accommodate working parents.

While many of the engineers tend to skew younger due to the recruitment of people right out of college, a fair percentage of employees are married and/or have children.

Also, I would add that we promote a work life balance for everyone. We provide 21 days vacation per year, and also welcome families on campus to have a meal, snack, etc. I have a two year old and will be expecting a second next month, and can say that the company is very flexible and generous. It is sometimes a challenge to balance work and children, and I haven't felt this way at all.

Do you get a lot of people applying just because it's Facebook? No matter how severely under-qualified they are. They just apply?

We receive hundreds of thousands of resumes per year and do our best to review all of them.

Do you feel that there is a 'rivalry' between Facebook and Google or Apple? Do you make fun of them?

EDIT: Grammar.

We are often times competing for similar talent, but we respect them tremendously.

do you ever recruit from countries outside US?

That we do - you can find a full list of open roles at our careers page: https://www.facebook.com/careers. You can search for roles by function and by location as well.

I am about to graduate law school (top 10% of my class) and do not really want to be an attorney. I have a philosophy background and am interested in facebook. Any good positions for me?

congrats on the graduation and top 10% - and I hear that a lot actually. You are welcome to apply for anything, but your experience could be cool on the user operations intellectual property team? Or something like the law enforcement response team lead? It would allow you to use some of your law-dog learning without having to go the attorney route and it could give you an advantage over other applicants.

What are you looking for in Law Enforcement Candidates? I hear that y'all hire people with LE experience to help out with Search Warrant investigations. I am definitely qualified.

this probably gives the best description:https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=it&req=a2KA0000000HV0iMAG

How many blue hoodies does Zuckerberg have?

noone actually knows - but we can go with more than you do

I went through the Facebook recruiting process for a position in Customer Relations in Austin. I was surprised and disappointed to not get the job (as I'm sure everyone who gets rejected is), but I was also sort of confused. What are dealbreakers for you guys when you recruit for that position? I thought I had a pretty good shot -- good grades, ivy league education, long history of technical work, got along great with my interviewers, etc. I'm happily employed elsewhere after getting a bunch of other offers, but that rejection has stuck with me and I'd love to know.

This one is tough because I don't know the details of your particular situation, but I am sure that you did have a pretty good shot. The truth is that we are often in the position of selecting the best fit from a slate of great candidates. I have interviewers tell me all of the time that they could happily work with several of the people that they interviewed, but we are often only hiring at that moment for 1 or 2 and the interview team debriefs to select the person or persons who consistently performed the best across each conversation. It is often very difficult and with small hiring numbers for specific positions, we know that we decline great people all the time. Not my favorite part of the job, for sure.

Which schools do you hire the most candidates from?

you can check out the schools that we visit most frequently here: https://www.facebook.com/careers/university (right hand column), but we also hire from about 100 additional universities

Would you hire someone who has no Facebook page

yes, and we have in the past

What exactly are you looking for in the ideal candidate?

Your question is pretty broad so reposting part of this answer: We're a culture of builders... of hackers. We don't just expect our engineers to move fast and ship stuff, but everyone is focused on building product and services that create a more open and connected world.

Not directly related to recruiting but how often do you have kegs in the office? If >= 1 time a week, what is the beer of choice?

At any given time you can probably find a keg somewhere on campus. If that proves difficult, we have a company sponsored happy hour every friday afternoon. The beer offered varies, but a good sampling would be stella, blue moon, sierra nevada, gordon biersch, and the list goes on.

How does your company encourage employees not to use Facebook (during work hours), while they're working for Facebook?

Using Facebook is central to most of our jobs here, whether it be through testing, groups, chat, etc, so it's definitely encouraged. Plus, everyone needs a little distraction from time to time.

Where does Facebook typically recruit from? If it's mostly from colleges, then which ones?

You can see a full list on www.facebook.com/university of the schools that we have a strong presence at. We source from all top CS programs across the country and around the world.

Do you guys have any fix-everything positions, similar to Google's Server Reliability Engineer spots?

One thing that I've been troubled with in the past is running into bug after bug, and not having the access to fix them. My team became very good at tracking down their scope and likely fixes without code or proper access, but it was a lot slower that way. Would be nice to be able to work across titles and platforms to get things fixed without red tape or involving five teams.

We have a few teams within Facebook Infrastructure which are working on similar areas of impact. Here is where we post those openings - https://www.facebook.com/careers/teams/infrastructure. Continue to check back as we are adding new positions all the time.

Do you ever look at facebook pages to "discover" people?

we use our graph search product. It's a great recruiting tool to target people based

What sorts of opportunities are available in the DC Metro area for someone with a non-technical background?

A lot of our policy and policy communications work is done at our DC office. Feel free to check out the DC careers page: https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/washington

Serious question: does Facebook hire MBA's for anything?

Yes, we do...and we love them. We formally recruit on a few MBA campuses for internships, but we list all of roles on our careers site as "University Business Intern..." and review all applicants who apply from any school. Every year we hire 2nd years that apply for roles through our site, but at this point we do not go on-campus for any full-time needs.

What is work like at Facebook? Hectic? Calm? LMS for an edited pic?

I think 'energy' sums it up well. People here are passionate about what they do, bottom line. You can feel this walking around. You can see this by the time people have put into painting walls and decorating the space around their work areas. People are here at all hours because they don't want to be anywhere else. There's always something fun going on, always amazing food to eat, and there's always someone incredibly smart to sit down with to figure out a hard problem.

Will you hire me?

submit your resume - that is the best way to find out