Why Facebook?


Why Facebook? It is critical to have a clear mind about why you decide to head to one of the largest tech companies in the world. Everyone needs good reasons for big career decisions, and every employer expects to hear good reasons for their next expensive hires.

In this article, I will show you 5 reasons why Facebook is among the best places to work and how to answer the question “Why Facebook?” during your interview.

Five Reasons to Work for Facebook

No.1: Facebook encourages autonomy and openness at workplace

Facebook has a performance-based, autonomous, and vibrant work culture, embracing employees to focus on impacts, stay informed, and stay connected. Facebook has its operating system built upon the flat structure, where titles and hierarchies do not matter, thereby removing excess management layers to improve communication and optimize the decision-making process among staff. Employees are genuinely evaluated based on their quality of work, power of conviction, and ability to influence others question.

Besides, there is a weekly Q&A within teams for updating and addressing questions and concerns. The section helps employees to keep up with the current work progress, also opens rooms to question and challenge the ideas when they disagree and work out for the solution, which is the best driver for employee engagement and hence building better services.

Also, Facebook focuses on creating a physically open space environment with a lot of people walking around, allowing as many conversations and collaborations at work as possible, making it easy to communicate with others and learn from colleagues.

No.2: Working at Facebook provides excellent networking opportunities

Facebookers are surrounded by smart, strength-driven, and innovative co-workers. “Facebook doesn’t want to hire an entire team of perfectly well-rounded engineers who can all do the same stuff equally well.” Instead, they look for people who are excellent at what they do best and place them in roles that cater to their strengths. Facebook gives its employees control over the work and their own space to freely be creative – do what they love, makes them feel of being valued and trusted.

Working in such an engaging environment motivates employees to thrive their best and also corporate with others to gain knowledge and hands-on experience, building a great network for life at Facebook.

No.3: Facebook has personalised training programs for employees

With a team of more than 13,000 employees, customised coaching is one of the best ways for Facebook to intensify their workers’ individual strengths and guarantee a qualified outcome standard for the whole organisation. The program has 30 coaches who concentrate on assessing the worker’s strengths built on those for the following sessions, which are usually an hour-long phone call to check the progress every two weeks. By doing this, Facebook avoids the typical “one-size-fits-all” training class, finding what employees indeed excel at and placing them in those roles, rather than get them to bolster their weaknesses.

No.4: Facebook offers competitive compensation

One of the most attractive things to become a Facebookers is outrageously high pay. According to Glassdoor, typically a Facebook employee earns an average salary of $152,500 (including Managers), ranging from $72,500-275,000 a year. This rate is quite high compared to other firms in the tech industry, which appeared in the list of top 10 highest-paying companies in 2019 at the rank of 8th.

No.5: Facebookers enjoy standout perks and benefits

Aside from the great pay, people also thrive to work at Facebook due to its standout perks and generous benefits. Employees can enjoy free food, transport to and from work, health and dental coverage, on-site haircuts, laundry services, full-service gyms, financial support for continuing education, paid vacation time, and stock options.

Facebook benefit is also praised for its radical parental-leave policies, which is stated as “a radical shift in the workplace that may dictate the future.” Parents working at Facebook that currently are in the first year of birth or placement are offered a full 4 months of paid leave, for both father and mother. They are encouraged to take full leave and should not have any concerns about being looked less committed than their colleagues. The implication has deeply presented the Facebook work culture of caring about their employees: “If you don’t have a philosophy built around taking care of your people, it may never work.”

No.6: Facebookers have a reasonable work-life balance

Compared to other popular tech companies, Facebook offers a quite reasonable work-life balance. About 54% of the employees at Facebook work 8 hours or less, while 13% of them have a very long day – longer than 12 hours, which is quite rare. In total, a typical staff at Facebook commits 40-45 hours a week. Of course, this number varies depending on job titles, projects, and how well each person can leverage given resources.

No.7: Facebookers have competitive exit options

Experience of working at such an innovative and prestigious tech company like Facebook is a great kickstart to competitive career growth in the tech industry. This is because Facebookers enjoy impressive exit opportunities thanks to dynamic working culture, well-rounded career opportunities, and high-quality alumni networks. The most typical routes of an ex-Facebook are Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

 

“Why Facebook?” – Interview Question

To deliver a convincing answer, there are two main parts that you need to cover: (1) your own personal reasons for the question “Why Facebook?”, and (2) a strategy to persuade the interviewer that this particular position at Facebook is for you. Here are some tips that help you build a comprehensive answer.

  • Deliver a specific and on-point answer despite the generic question by breaking it down into two parts: “Why this unit?” and “Why this position?” Making sure that you understand well about the unit you are applying to via the alumni networks or work forums.
  • Have your own story by including personal experience along with the insights mentioned above, modified in a way that highlight your characters and impacts. Choose only insights that resonate with you the most. That way, your answer will sound more sincere.
  • Deliver your answer strategically by structuring your points and collect strong evidence to back up each point you made. A recommended framework to efficiently tell a story but implicitly show off qualifications and traits is STAR: situation – task – action – results.

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