Odds of being qualified if contacted by internal recruiter?
If you receive LinkedIn emails from an internal recruiter at FB or similar, what are the odds you're actually a good technical fit for the role? Do they cast a wide net, expecting to quickly narrow down their leads in the phone screen / interview process or do they try to reach out only to people who seem like a solid technical fit? Over the past year, I've gotten emails from Facebook, Amazon, Uber, and LinkedIn reaching out to see if I had interest in a senior level role on various engineering teams. While I have a strong interest in working for one or more of these companies at some point, I've always seen it as having one shot to interview successfully at these type of companies, and since I'm not in a hurry, I'd rather wait till I know I'm ready. I know that algorithms are not my strong suit, and any fresh CS grad could run circles around me on those type of questions. (I'm a front-end dev with strong Angular, React, Redux, etc.) For reference, I have 10+ yrs exp, I'm well compensated, my employer is very satisfied with my performance, and I have career opportunities at my current role. I have no concerns about being able to quickly find a similar role/compensation at other companies in the area (Texas). But I still fear that I'm not prepared to pass a technical interview at these companies, even if I could perform 95% of the daily work there with little difficulty.
I have similar concerns in general. My situation is basically the same, 10+ years but wanting of algorithm knowledge. What I’ve done is, since I’m not in any sort of crazy rush to leave my current job I’ve used these interviews as an opportunity to get an idea of what the SV culture might be like and what the interview process is like. When it comes to these challenges it’s pretty hit and miss for me. I made it through to on-site interviews at Google and Apple, but didn’t do well on Amazon and LinkedIn’s challenges. Doing a phone interview with Facebook today. I haven’t gotten any offers yet, but one thing that’s important to note is that they all put a 1 year block on your interviews. You have the option to interview again after that year is up. So if you’re in a solid place now, like I am, I’d go ahead and try it out. Worst case, you’ll have a better understanding of what the tests are like and you can try again in a year.
That may not be a bad idea. I wonder if having a block on your record (even if over a year ago) is a factor at all in future interviews.
I got hired after 2 failed interviews 2 years in a row while in college. I don't think having a block really matters.
If you bomb the soft skills intv its hard to be revisited even after some time has passed
In general, most internal recruiting teams are broken down into skill sets (backend, frontend, full stack, mobile, specialized etc etc) by eng org (infra, payments, rider, driver, security etc etc) so if they're reaching out they're doing so because on paper they think you have a shot. Probably worth having a call to see what's up and just letting them know you're not ready and they may give you some pointers...good luck!
Thanks. This msg mentioned Uber Engineering but no further breakdown of which team. Do you happen to know how much general CS knowledge is expected for front-end engineers there? I'm familiar with various data structures and at one point passed homework assignments on various sorting algorithms, but I haven't really had a need to use that information in the last decade and can't exactly write one from memory.