Heard that meta/fb will straight away reject/ignore applicants who are non sc/pr, for both fulltime roles and internships, no matter how good they are. Is that true? If yes, why? This does not seem to happen in other firms.
Not the case when I applied in October 2021
Based on what I heard from my friends and my own experience, I am inclined to believe it is true. There are tons of good candidates, some even with referrals from full-timers, rejected at resume round. Some of them are cp-ers who won icpc regional first places, some of them have tons of internship experience, some of them did a lot of projects in school (e.g. cvwo, cs3216/17) and on their own, but facebook rejected all of them at the resume round. I do not yet know anyone without singapore citizen/pr who can get past through resume screening at facebook. It is okay, it happens. Just join a company that actually pays attention to good candidates and are willing to sponsor for work authorization. There are quite a few lying around. Plus, you may pivot your attention elsewhere as well. There are perfectly good opportunities lying around at Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shanghai in APAC that care about what candidates can deliver rather than what work authorization these candidates possess.
I think this happens to some other places as well, for example, gov agencies like GovTech, prop shops like Squarepoint, crypto firms like Binance. But what really sucks at FB is that they don't even bother to politely inform the candidates that they don't sponsor visas or at least add a line in their JD saying they only consider citizens/PRs. I think that really reflects a lot on their culture and values. Hopefully this thread serves as a reminder for the juniors. Don't waste your time applying to FB. You deserve better places :)
I, like many non-SC/PRs, was rejected in the resume screen in Aug/Sep even with a referral from a full-timer. But I suspect they did a headcount review in Oct/Nov since the HR later decided to invite me to the interviews in Dec. But after going through the onsites, they told me they had no more headcount. It sucks but that's what you have to make-do as a foreigner in Singapore.
