Will the company that fired you rehire you? Meta won’t due to its ‘block’ lists

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent firm of apps like Facebook and Instagram, has ‘block’ lists to prevent some fired employees from being rehired by the company, Business Insider reported.

According to few former employees that Business Insider spoke to, Meta maintains lists barring a few former employees from rejoining, despite having good performance records.

While such lists aren’t illegal, they are unusual, employment and human resource experts said.

Ineligible for rehire

An unnamed engineer, who is still trying to rejoin the company, was fired by Meta during the company’s mass layoff of 10,000 employees carried out in 2022. The engineer had worked with Meta for over four years.

They had consistently received ‘Exceeded Expectations’ ratings on the company’s performance scale and had even been promoted to a senior technical role a year prior to being laid-off. They were told that their firing was simply a business decision and that several hiring managers now wanted to rehire them.

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However, despite applying to about 20 job openings, they noted that hiring managers would express interest in hiring them and connect them with a recruiter, who would then ghost them.

A hiring manager whom the engineer contacted said Meta’s recruiting team had forbidden the manager from contacting the engineer because they were deemed “ineligible for rehire”.

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Meta’s lists of former employees reportedly include ‘non-regrettable attrition’ and ‘do not hire’ lists, though the exact mechanisms and number of affected employees remain unclear. According to two former Meta managers, managers have the freedom to add names to the lists without documented performance issues.

Multiple internal communications Business Insider reviewed showed that managers encounter systemic barriers when attempting to rehire certain former employees.

What Meta said on the allegations

“There are clear criteria for when someone is marked ineligible for rehire that are applied to all departing employees and there are checks and balances in the process so that a single manager cannot unilaterally tag someone ineligible without support,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.

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“We determine, at the time of separation, the reason for the employee’s departure — policy violation, performance termination, voluntary resignation etc. — and that, along with the last rating prior to separation and any other recent performance signals, determines whether an employee is eligible for rehire or not,” the spokesperson added.

One former manager, however, said that they and other managers at the company were able to put people on lists by “just filling out a form” and “putting in any real issue.”