Note: This post is somewhat targeted at the University of Waterloo students, but you can read on even if you don’t go there.

So two weeks ago I was applying for fulltime jobs on Jobmine (the UW internal career sercives website). One of the postings was for Facebook, so I obviously decided to apply. I pimped up my resume with some of my PHP projects and sent it in. I get a response last week that I wasn’t selected for an interview. Ok there Sparky…

I wasn’t gonna give up, so I asked some people that I know at Facebook for an advice. With some of their help and my own research I came up with a number of steps/facts that might help you to get an interview there, even if you got rejected on Jobmine.

1. Learn to deal with the fact that jobmine and other career service websites SUCK!
2. Go to http://www.facebook.com/careers/ and apply to one of the open positions there directly. If you are interested in multiple positions, apply to all of them.
3. If you know anyone at Facebook, ask them to find your application and tag it. This is not super crutial, I guess.
4. Go to http://www.facebook.com/careers/#/careers/puzzles.php and solve one of Facebook’s Engineering coding puzzles. Preferably meal or buffet level. This step IS crutial, as it will separate you from a large pile of resumes that they receive. If you can, solve two or three puzzles. It was enough for me to solve one (Fridge Madness). I think solving more might improve your chances during the interview. I’m actually thinking of solving more.
5. Wait for an email from the recruiter. If he/she askes you to do a coding puzzle first, say that you already solved a couple.

After that point, you should technically get an offer for an interview. Good luck!