Facebook Associate User Experience Researcher Interview

Interview Details – I applied online sometime in December. Basically you can just submit your Facebook profile and a resume.

A recruiter contacted me through LinkedIn in mid-December and seemed unaware that I had applied for the job but wanted to talk to me. I told her my availability and did not hear back from her.

I missed a call from the recruiter the first week of January. Apparently she had sent me a message that I never received scheduling our interview for that time and date. I then had a lot of difficulty getting a message back to her and thought it must have had to do with some problem with the LinkedIn messaging system. Eventually I had an interview with the recruiter that was a pretty basic HR screening interview.

After that I had a phone interview with a UX Researcher. Actually, we had the same mysterious difficulty in which she had supposedly sent me a message scheduling the interview that I did not receive, and I missed the first call from the UX Researcher. (I really looked into every possibility and don't see how it could have been any problem on my end, which was really frustrating). We cleared it up and had it the next week. The interviewer was driving a car during the interview...

After that I had another phone interview with a different UX Researcher who was a little tougher.

I was then scheduled for an on-site visit at the beginning of March. A recruiter called me the day before my trip and mentioned that I would be doing a mock user test before the three interviews I had already been informed of.

At the beginning of the visit, I had 15 minutes to prepare for the mock user test, and then was led to a room to conduct the test while a room full of UX Researchers observed through a mirrored window. I was kind of anxious to get through it and get to the interviews I had spent most of my time preparing for, but I thought it went fine enough. Afterwards we had a short discussion about the test, then I had lunch with the recruiter.

After lunch the recruiter left me alone for a few minutes, then came back to inform me that we weren't going to continue the interview because I had missed a lot of opportunities in the user test.

Hmm... OK.

Overall it wasn't a terrible experience, but I really feel that *they* may be missing a lot of opportunities in the way they are recruiting.

The emphasis on moderating tests wasn't clear at any point of the process and was not even emphasized when the on-site visit was scheduled. If it had been, I certainly would have been more prepared for that particular aspect of the visit. Regardless, I don't see how those 15 minutes could have indicated to them that I would not be able to moderate tests in whatever the ideal Facebook approach to moderating tests is. I kind of suspect that there is something else they are looking at - or maybe they just didn't like the look of me.