Just got rejected after the first PM round at FB. I didn’t do that well. But in the rejection email the recruiter says they “would encourage [me] to apply with [FB] again soon.” How do I interpret this? I meet their bar, and am a qualified candidate, but should apply again because the currently open roles are not a match? I don’t meet the bar but maybe in future when I’m interviewed by a different team they may find me suitable? Just keep trying - you probably had a bad day today?
You didn’t do so poorly that you are banned from ever trying again.
Many people fail before getting an offer (at least in eng). It means you probably did ok but the hard data wasn't enough for a hire decision. These things have a strong bias for preventing bad hires which often leads to rejecting good hires. Facebook openly admits they do have a lot of false negatives. Many times qualified applicants get unlucky, you can't prepare for everything.
Just means you are not blacklisted because of your performance. Wait for 6 months and apply again.
Why 6 months? The recruiter didn’t say anything of that sort
It’s an unsaid rule.
As an interviewer, I explicitly write in feedback if I think someone deserves a second chance. Mostly on the lines of, candidate was good, but does not pass our bar of x questions in y minutes with basic to moderate hints, candidate shows learning ability and can be interviewed again in future.
Also for extremely bad performers, which I have seen applying for umpteenth time and getting worse feedback each time, and still get to the interview phase for some weird reason, I explicitly mention that we might not want to consider this candidate for this role in near future. It’s just waste of time
Appreciate your specificity! Thanks
In fact, recruiters reach out to people after 6 months/year after they fail the interview. My friends have got repeated calls, also not everybody gets in the first time. Many people get in after 2/3 tries. So definitely apply again in 6 months
If they encourage you to apply again, it could be that you barely didn't meet the bar. Everyone mentioning 6 months as a good wait time is right. The idea is that you should have more experience by then and have a better chance of passing the interview.
they want you to apply again soon
Lol ok. Let me elaborate
the recruiter isn't qualified to determine if you meet the bar (unless you got through). you did well enough to hold the recruiter's attention but not well enough to get through.