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Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes for a second. Facebook has a vast array of technologies in use, from the top to the bottom of the stack and across a wide

Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes for a second. Facebook has a vast array of technologies in use, from the top to the bottom of the stack and across a wide breadth of problem domains. A lot of the time there are competing technologies. No one engineer at Facebook is familiar with the sum of technologies worked on by engineers at Facebook. It stands to reason that recruiters are in the same boat. So if someone comes to you and says "I've used Oberon, which is like Modula", do you know if they're correct? You don't, really. They very well may be. But the recruiter may also be dealing with one of the three dozen hopefuls every day who are desperate to pitch that X is similar enough to Y that they should be given a chance. The recruiter was in the wrong. But at that size, there will always be recruiters who are in the wrong. It's luck of the draw. I've dealt with two Facebook recruiters in the past 4 years: one who misunderstood my résumé, another who understands it quite well. These days I don't take it personally.

pweissbrod 9y ago
If I'm a recruiter and an intelligent-sounding person comes to me and says theyve used Oberon which is like Modula I would do 30 seconds research and understand if that is true, maybe reach out to my peers for more info. If I didnt bother accepting anything beyond an exact keyword match of something I didnt understand then I was probably a lousy recruiter and likely not worth my paycheck.
- kichik 9y ago
  In your experience, does it make sense for Facebook to also hire low-level recruiters to go over a mass of students? Would those recruiters be expected to do the same?
  - aianus 9y ago
    If your expectations from a recruiter are this low, might as well replace them with a spam bot, web form, and a recruiting video.
  - pweissbrod 9y ago
    I'm not a recruiting manager. You cant really turn this situation around on me. I dont make the rules. If your job is procuring or selling a resource and you have little/no appreciation of said resource then you're effectively a spam bot. Imagine a car salesman said to you "Im a low level guy. I dont really know cars. But I bet you'd look great in this blue one". Does that sound acceptable to you?
    - kichik 9y ago
      I misread your original comment as "I'm a recruiter but..."
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  I'm not a recruiter, but I'd hope that's how it goes normally. If you can't find someone to answer your question, or don't even know how to start to find someone inside the org, what do you do? I guess my position is that I dislike beating up on people simply for not knowing something that's not common knowledge in their own area of expertise.
  - obsurveyor 9y ago
    > If you can't find someone to answer your question, or don't even know how to start to find someone inside the org, what do you do? As my brother used to say when he was in the Marines in a non-combat position: "They literally pay me to move sheets of paper from the left side of the desk to the right."
personjerry 9y ago
This seems to be downvoted; Could one of the downvoters explain their point of view? I was pretty annoyed at the recruiter too but this explanation seemed to make sense for me.

pweissbrod 9y ago

If I'm a recruiter and an intelligent-sounding person comes to me and says theyve used Oberon which is like Modula I would do 30 seconds research and understand if that is true, maybe reach out to my peers for more info. If I didnt bother accepting anything beyond an exact keyword match of something I didnt understand then I was probably a lousy recruiter and likely not worth my paycheck.

kichik 9y ago
In your experience, does it make sense for Facebook to also hire low-level recruiters to go over a mass of students? Would those recruiters be expected to do the same?
- aianus 9y ago
  If your expectations from a recruiter are this low, might as well replace them with a spam bot, web form, and a recruiting video.
- pweissbrod 9y ago
  I'm not a recruiting manager. You cant really turn this situation around on me. I dont make the rules. If your job is procuring or selling a resource and you have little/no appreciation of said resource then you're effectively a spam bot. Imagine a car salesman said to you "Im a low level guy. I dont really know cars. But I bet you'd look great in this blue one". Does that sound acceptable to you?
  - kichik 9y ago
    I misread your original comment as "I'm a recruiter but..."
jacques_chester 9y ago
I'm not a recruiter, but I'd hope that's how it goes normally. If you can't find someone to answer your question, or don't even know how to start to find someone inside the org, what do you do? I guess my position is that I dislike beating up on people simply for not knowing something that's not common knowledge in their own area of expertise.
- obsurveyor 9y ago
  > If you can't find someone to answer your question, or don't even know how to start to find someone inside the org, what do you do? As my brother used to say when he was in the Marines in a non-combat position: "They literally pay me to move sheets of paper from the left side of the desk to the right."

personjerry 9y ago

This seems to be downvoted; Could one of the downvoters explain their point of view? I was pretty annoyed at the recruiter too but this explanation seemed to make sense for me.