i think basically they look at the companies listed and think "this person has a shot at passing our leetcode style interviews" rather than can this person's experience contribute to our organization in a meaningful way. Essentially, most engineers at most companies are just replaceable cogs. I'm going through interviews with FAANG right now and boy, it's so scripted, you have leetcode questions tagged with the company so you grind those and hope to see those in an interview, there are "behavior" type questions which are tagged so you prep for those and give a regurgitated answer which you think will win you approval rather than an authentic answer. The sad part about all this is that it works, but it also leaves one feeling dead inside.

Before I was a lead research engineer at CMU, I only rarely showed up on search results for FAANG companies. After a few months of being there, I started appearing rather frequently, and their recruiters would even argue with me that I should interview with them. A Facebook recruiter once told me they targeted me specifically because and I quote, "we know smart people are there". My favorite line of BS from them was when an Instagram recruiter tried to tell me, "everyone is our kind of candidate" LOL!

Being a lead research engineer isn't quite the same as being one of the PhD students. Although I did get quite a few people there who insisted I would be great for FAANG, it remains impossible to get in. Meh. I refuse to pay for leetcode premium and effectively cheese my way in.

> Meh. I refuse to pay for leetcode premium and effectively cheese my way in.

NMGI

If you aren't willing to do that, you wouldn't want to be around people extremely comfortable doing that, or a couple dozen other things viewed amorally.

Nobody in these companies values academia, and would not care about the distinction you mentioned there about a lead versus a PhD.

You're either in or you're not.

> Some of them don't even bother with reading your LinkedIn profile I have a lot of experience in Quality Assurance. MANUFACTURING Quality Assurance.

> I get about 1-2 messages per month of people trying to recruit me for IT Quality Assurance positions

Gotta love recruiters

If you want better results replace UC with University of Tennessee and replace all the large, well-known companies with two that nobody has ever heard of. Zero callback guarantee.

Ahem, we all know that "UC" is the University of Cincinnati, not this upstart band of ragtag institutes out west. That helps with the callbacks too.

In this case, it looks like the ATS looked only at the company listed in the resume and nothing else. Pair that to the fact that most HR people who are doing the first screening step have absolutely no clue about technology and you end up with situations like this one. The lack of accountability in HR departments is baffling and they are the ones pushing all this tech like ATS, video screening to the senior management to make their job easier while still doing a terrible job at it.

Do employers actually care about GPA and SAT scores? Obviously some of the things are there just to troll, but is that something they actually care about?

I actually did an interview at the age of about 30 where HR wanted to know my ACT score, and what wage I made at my teenager-job when I was 16. I don't know that they cared (I got the job anyway), but it was bizarre to be pressed on that.

My last job called people’s high school to verify you graduated and would fire you if the school didn’t verify or didn’t exist anymore. Something like 60% of high schools refused any information, including if you even attended. Probably because my previous employer sold competing products those schools used.

I had to sign a release form for this shortly after I was hired.

Interesting. I never took the SAT/ACT and have yet to obtain a degree so I'd never even but a second of thought into it. Looks like someone cared at one point though!

Hmm, I’m going to put that I DIDN’T work at a FAANG company on my resume and see if it helps me at all.

spoiler alert... it won't

well now wait a minute - if you put in a part at the bottom of the resume:

"After my astounding work at places that were not Amazon, Facebook, and Google I believe I am able to meet any challenge head on"

I think it might actually increase your number of contacts based on some recruiter with a keyword match script bringing you up.

Agreed. Not all, but many companies that are very large use automated systems for screening resumes. Any FAANG listed in a resume will certainly get flagged by a system.

Just like non-ECC RAM in product search results... I really don't want to stoop that low or have anyone else stoop that low.

to be clear my observation that stooping will have results beneficial to the stooper does not on my part serve as a recommendation to stoop.

<insert long winded rant about the uselessness of recruiters and headhunters> If there's any job that doesn't require any skills at all its in HR