This was my second time applying to this position.
Process:
(1) Recruiter reached out me via email; didn't make sense to interview when they reached out but I reached out half a year later and arranged a phone screen.
(2) Technical phone screen with Facebook data scientist. Three parts: (1) medium-hard SQL questions (no query execution, just write out query on shared text file) (2) metric ideation for measuring success of a new feature on Facebook, and then how to debug if this metric goes down (my answer: make sure this isn't an instrumentation error, then group by geo, user age, seasonality, if a power user, etc.) (3) talk through setting up an experiment for the new feature
The recruiter reached out to me and said that I passed the phone screen ... but that since Facebook ran out of headcount for this position, the interview process was coming to a halt. Needless to say, shocked this would happen at a company as large as Facebook!
Recruiter recommended checking in 6 months if headcount appeared but I found this suggestion pretty unhelpful since I was actively searching.
I tried to see if the recruiter could refer me to an open position at Instagram, but they declined to do so. Maybe they aren't incentivized to pass a lead to another part of the company?
Their loss. I ended up recently accepting a position at another FAANG company.