Question

CASE 6-2 NOT GETTING FACE TIME AT FACEBOOK—AND GETTING THE LAST LAUGH! In August 2009, Facebook turned down job applicant Brian Acton, an experienced engineer who had previously worked at Yahoo and Apple. More than 4 years later, Facebook paid him $3 billion to acquire his 20% stake of WhatsApp, a start-up he had cofounded immediately after Facebook rejected his job application.(1) WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary, cross-platform, instant-messaging subscription service for smartphones and selected feature phones that use the Internet for communication. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages, as well as their location using integrated mapping features.(2) How could Facebook, a highly successful firm, have made such a drastic mistake? Back in 2009, Brian Acton was a software engineer who was out of work for what seemed like a very long time. He believed he had what it took to make a difference in the industry, but his career did not work out as planned. Even though he spent years at Apple and Yahoo, he got rejected many times by Twitter and Facebook.(3) Acton described the details of the interview process that he failed to do well in as follows: First of all, interviewing a person for a job that requires technical skills is difficult for both the interviewer and the interviewee. Facebook is a highly desirable firm to work for and requires the best skills and talents from all of their potential employees. It is therefore not surprising that the selection process rivals, if not tops, any company in the industry. The process starts with an email or a phone call from a recruiter in response to an online application or [to] a recommendation from a friend who may work for Facebook. Sometimes, in the initial chat online, timed software coding challenges are set to find the best performers. If this chat goes well, an applicant will go on to the next level—an initial inperson interview or phone screening.(4) In this next hurdle, the applicant will have a 45-minute chat with a fellow engineer/potential coworker, [with] whom he or she shares the same area of expertise. They will tell you about their job and what their role is in Facebook; then they ask about the applicant’s résumé, motivation, and interests. Additionally, the applicant will be tested about his or her technical skills, coding exercises, and programming abilities.(5) If successful, the applicant will be invited for back-to-back interviews. This part of the process is very grueling and stressful since all the interviews take place throughout a single day. The candidate will also be asked to manually write a program on a whiteboard to make sure that the applicant is knowledgeable about program writing. The goal in this final step is to see how one approaches a problem and comes up with a solution [that] is simple enough to solve in 10–30 minutes and can be easily explained.(6) As a potential coworker, the applicant will be tested in terms of understanding and explaining complex ideas, with most tasks project related and constantly changing. This requires employees to possess a diversified set of skills. That is the reason why the applicant is not only tested in coding skills . . . but also to gauge enthusiasm and motivation. The applicant’s leadership and decision-making skills are also evaluated as the company seeks to find someone who can make a large impact on the industry and make quick decisions. After going through this arduous process, Brian Acton was one of the engineers who received an email that “regretted to inform” him that he didn’t get the position. Yet he stayed positive and took a different path, which led him to start his own company, WhatsApp. Teaming up with Yahoo alumni, he developed the most popular text-messaging application, and the company was sold to Facebook for a total of $19 billion in 2014. This epic comeback proves how persistence and ambition play a huge role in job hunting; but it also proves how difficult it is to hire the right employee, even when that person has the best skill set.

From what you have read, what are the criteria of selection employed by Facebook? Are they valid and reliable? How might this explain why Acton was not hired?

Answer 1

- Criteria of selection employed by Facebook on the basis of the case study given:

The first step of the selection process is an email or phone call received from the recruiter in response to the application made online or reference from a friend working in Facebook. Now in the initial chat online there would also be timed software coding challenges given to them.

Now in the second step the applicant will have a 45 45-minute chat with a fellow engineer/potential coworker who is into the same area of expertise where they would be talking about the resume and the interests quoted in the same. There would also be a test on the technical skills, coding exercises and programming abilities.

Once you have made through all these steps successfully, you would be going to the final step were you would be interviewed for back to back interviews which would be stressful. Here there would be written tests also where the candidate will have to write program on the white board and explain the same which is to have an understanding regarding your ability to understanding and explaining complex ideas and your ability to constantly evolve with the change.

When we conclude the whole idea of Facebook’s interview criteria we can see that the company is not just testing the coding or technical abilities of the employees but also those abilities of the candidates with respect to decision making skills and understanding the complex problems that might arise during their employment at Facebook.

- Are the above explained criteria valid and reliable and how this might explain why Acton was not hired:

Coming to this question, in my opinion the above criteria of hiring of Facebook is good and reliable but only to some extent. Facebook is a big organization which is evolving and holds scope for much more advancement. And this is one major reason that they hold this complex interview process where they grill the same candidate on multiple scales so as to get the best out of them.

But one thing that as the hiring entity should keep in mind is that multiple levels for testing the coding and technical skills would not serve the purpose. And you cannot expect any candidate to take the best decisions or an appropriate decision when they are in a stressed out situation due to the back to back interviews and less time given. SO what I suggest would be that to cut down the interview steps into such manner that it holds only the necessary 2 or three days interview where there is enough time gap given for completing each step and are not filled with many small and untimely or unnecessary interviews. This would help them have a detailed talk and conversation with the available candidates and know them more at only required levels and also help us get the best out of these available candidates.

And coming to the case of Acton who was not selected despite of having experience and holding intelligence in the coding or technical skills would be that he was already stressed due to not having a job for a period which he thought was long enough and then was thrown to an interview which was having multiple levels of defined and non-defined steps. If they had only tested him with defined steps for getting the core out of him, they would have won the best candidate in their company and WA would have evolved inside Facebook and they would not have ended up in the place to buy it.