I submitted my resume online and was able to indicate a Facebook employee (a former colleague of mine) to act as a reference.
A week later, I was contacted by a recruiter letting me know that based on my profile I looked like I would be a good fit, and included a writing test for me to complete in one week, which was a sufficient amount of time. The writing test included two parts: first, write one page guide for users on how to use FB Events, specifically for the teacher demographic.
About one week later, the same recruiter wrote me saying I had passed the writing test and that she would like to chat on the phone. The phone interview with the recruiter was pretty straight-forward. She just asked me about my background, what type of work I did at each job, why I left each, and why I'd like to work for Facebook. She also asked me if I had used data to make decisions, inform my writing, and also whether I had done a/b testing. Towards the end she asked me housekeeping questions, was I considering other jobs, when could I start, what my salary expectations were, and after that she said everything checked out and she felt comfortable inviting me to meet with the content team for an on-site interview, plus another writing test. Her advice to me: study Facebook Help Center, Facebook in the press, think analytically about how to improve Help Center, user education considering mobile and international audiences.
A few days later, the details of my on-site interview were e-mailed to me by an HR assistant, laid out nicely and clearly. I had about 1.5 weeks to prepare for the on-site and took the recruiter's advice.
On-site interview was on a Wednesday from 9 to 11:30 AM.
First 30 minutes were dedicated to the writing test given. They provided me with a Macbook in a small conference room. The writing prompt asked me to re-write two FAQs from the Help Center. I was interrupted twice during my writing test, once by the HR assistant who came in to connect the ethernet cable, and a second time by the original recruiter who introduced herself and mentioned that the first writing test would have more weight than this one, this one was more to test how I write under pressure. I still don't know if those interruptions were intentional, either way, I lost about 5 minutes and this led to me not being able to complete the writing test (had about 25% left).
Next two hours, I met with 5 people on the content team; three were 1:1 including with the hiring manager, and I met with the two more junior team members as a pair. They all came into the conference room with their MacBook Pros ready to type notes as they interviewed me. All their questions were about the same: describe myself, what was my work like at X, Y, Z. How would I improve the Help Center, How have I used data to inform writing, What do I think is the point of the Help Center, etc. etc. The hiring manager asked questions with a little more purpose. She asked me what other writing jobs I was looking at, when I described them to her she said they sounded a lot more "creative" than the work I'd be doing at Facebook and was that OK with me? I was caught off guard by that, but kept my ground and kept it positive. She also asked me if I had experience doing pivot tables. I said yes but my voice wavered as I do not have a lot of experience with it. She emphasized a couple more times in the conversation that there was no room for creativity or color in Help Center content, and that that was more for the Marketing team. I think after talking to me she sensed that the type of work I am better fit for is more editorial and creative, and the actual work at Facebook would not be fulfilling to me as someone 5 years into my writing/marketing career with a strong sense of what I want to do and feel most passionately about.
One week later, I got an e-mail from Facebook recruiting thanking me, saying I was not a fit based on my background, etc. Pretty standard. I think the interviews went well for me, but in the end, I was not a fit.
