How block lists silently affect your job search and career advancement

Earlier this month, Business Insider revealed that Meta maintains secret "block" lists preventing some former employees from being rehired. Since then, a flood of emails and messages to BI, as well as discussions across Reddit and LinkedIn, suggests that this practice, while not illegal, is far more widespread than many job seekers realize.

Workers from across corporate America shared eerily similar stories of applying for roles at former employers only to be mysteriously ghosted by recruiters or quietly marked as "ineligible for rehire." In many cases, the affected individuals claimed they had strong performance records and no history of workplace misconduct. All of them requested for their identities and the names of their workplaces to be kept anonymous to prevent retaliation from their former employers.

From the companies' view, such lists are a way to help reduce the risk of a bad rehire and institutionalize that knowledge.

'A special kind of cruelty'

One former employee from the consulting industry who described their experience in an email to BI said that they found themselves on a block list after they quit because of workplace politics. This employee said that they found out they were on a list from the company's HR department after applying to multiple roles since they left. "To make matters worse, [I] confirmed that it's still happening even after eight years of leaving," they wrote, adding that they were exploring legal options.

A former employee of a major chip company who was part of a wave of layoffs in 2015 said they were told they were "banned for life" from working at the company despite a promotion and a raise right before the cut. "Why? No one seems to know," they said, "and it seems likely that I will never know."

Another former employee of the same chip company told BI that their manager put them on a list after they left due to disagreements. When managers, including ones this person had known for years, tried to rehire them over the years, they wouldn't be able to. "At one point, I checked with HR, and they confirmed to me that I was on a list," they said. "But told me that a manager could overturn the decision, but that never happened."

At some companies, human resources have designated alternate names for the "block" list. An engineer who worked for a large publicly traded internet company based in Silicon Valley from 2010 to 2014 told BI that these block lists existed at the company, too, but with a different categorization. "I got strong performance reviews for multiple consecutive performance cycles," they said. "But when I resigned, I was put on a 'non-regretted attrition' list."

Another former manager who worked at the same company from 2009 through 2016 in multiple countries said that a label called "non-regretted attrition" when an employee quit would essentially block them from being rehired. "The only people deciding which category someone who left fell into was HR and the direct manager," they said. "On the flip side, if you were 'regretted attrition,' you would be fast-tracked for interviews and at least guaranteed a recruiter screen."

Other emails and messages to Business Insider came from frustrated ex-workers from Meta. Three former Meta employees who were laid off along with thousands of other workers in 2022 told BI that multiple hiring managers who had tried to rehire them were told by HR that these former employees were on "do not hire" lists and could not be hired back. "All of those opportunities ended in mysterious dead ends," one of them wrote. "It felt like a special kind of cruelty."

One said previous managers at the company ran "into roadblocks" after having recruiters reach out to rehire them. "In my conversation with someone from HR, I was told there is a 'do not engage' flag against my name in their system despite having good performance ratings during my time at Meta," they told BI.

A Meta spokesperson previously told BI that the company had "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."

The company also said that its decision to bar an ex-employee from rehire is based on a multitude of factors: "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."

Block lists across all industries

A nurse with 38 years of experience claimed that even hospitals around the country keep block lists after unsuccessfully trying to get rehired at previous workplaces and hearing from HR that they weren't eligible "If a manager has a beef against an employee, they can easily keep them from being hired again," they said. "It is, more often than not, punitive, and there is nothing you can do about it."

On Reddit, dozens of people talked about how commonplace the practice seems to be. One user shared how their company's internal block list functioned: "If you leave for a competitor, you're automatically flagged as 'do not rehire.' There's no discussion, no appeal — just an invisible wall you don't even know exists until you try coming back."

"Companies do input whether you are eligible for rehire in their human capital management (HCM) system," career coach Marlo Lyons told BI. "If they put 'not eligible for rehire,' which many fired employees are, then you would not be rehired no matter how you've changed or grown and no matter if you applied to a different department. [It] does raise questions about how these decisions are made and whether employees have any recourse."

A 'large-scale, systematic approach'

On LinkedIn, more than a hundred people weighed in on a post by Laszlo Bock, a former Google HR head, who was surprised by Meta's block lists that BI reported about. "I've never heard of anything like this," Bock wrote on the platform. "I've sometimes heard an exec say, 'Don't ever re-hire this person,' but never seen a large-scale, systematic approach like this."

Karen Liska, an attorney and Director of People Operations at SafeSend, wrote in a comment on Bock's post that some companies used such lists as "a risk mitigation strategy" but added that there could be issues with their implementation. "Like any other tool in a large org that is meant to help keep systems functioning, it can be used for protective purposes or other legitimate business reasons, or it can be used improperly as part of retaliation or to maintain discriminatory practices," Liska wrote. She questioned whether these lists should have expiration dates "to give people a chance to learn and grow or for the security/revenge risk to cool off."

Rehiring former employees can be a business risk, Liska told BI in an interview. They might need performance interventions, or resume past negative behaviors like poor attendance. "An 'ineligible for rehire' list helps protect against these risks by ensuring that regardless of turnover in HR or leadership, there is a source of knowledge within the business about which former employees may not be viable future candidates," she said.

If someone is fired or laid off, being ineligible for rehire should be communicated, Liska said. And companies should have a policy for re-evaluating the reasons someone is placed on a list to begin with to leave a potential opening in the future when there isn't a significant legal risk. "Perhaps a different manager, or a different line of work, or just gaining more experience could make all the difference and turn an underperforming or unhappy former employee into a productive and happy returning employee," she said.

Liska believes it's time to have an industry-wide conversation about this practice. "Simply saying 'don't have these lists at all' without a viable alternative ignores the difficulties of managing large companies at scale." she said.

For employees, the existence of block lists introduces yet another layer of uncertainty in an already ruthless job market. While companies argue that blocking certain employees is a matter of business strategy or risk management, critics say the practice disproportionately harms workers who may have left on neutral terms.

If you're a current or former Meta employee or have an insight to share about the company, contact Pranav Dixit from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at pranavdixit@protonmail.com.