Hiring & Talent Acquisition Handbook
At the core of our team’s vision, mission, and strategy is our ability to impact GitLab’s overarching mission: to make it so that everyone can contribute. When everyone can contribute, users become contributors and we greatly increase the rate of innovation.
As a Talent Acquisition team, we have an outsized impact on GitLab’s ability to make this mission a reality, by connecting top talent to profound careers from wherever they are in a truly distributed, remote workforce.
Talent Acquisition Vision Statement
To create globally inclusive access to opportunities so that everyone can contribute.
Talent Acquisition Mission Statement
It is the Talent Acquisition Team’s mission to predictably build distributed, representative teams that enable our vision of creating globally inclusive access to opportunities so that everyone can contribute.
Our Guiding Principles
As we set out over the next decade to achieve this vision, we will continue to rely on core guiding principles to define how we build toward the future.
- Experience: Stakeholder experience is central to all that we do. We are not purely a service provider but a partner and advisor in creating a best-in-class experience while building GitLab as a company. The Talent Acquisition team looks after building an experience for our customers, stakeholders, and partners that stands true to our CREDIT values and provides a level of care we are proud of - no matter the outcome.
- Inclusivity: Applying best practices in the craft of Talent Acquisition has an outsized impact on our ability to build a representative workforce here at GitLab. By embedding inclusivity as a guiding principle, we design fair and equitable processes into the fabric of all that we do, rather than retroactively adding parameters to solve systemic challenges in the societies we exist in
- Predictability: Our ability to have the right people, in the right jobs, at the right time is imperative to our ability to execute our commitments and plans as an organization. In order to achieve that, our team must design with an eye for accuracy and forecastability in any program, process or experience we enable.
Our Objectives and Roadmap
We strive to be as transparent as possible, but these sections are only available for our GitLab team members. FY24 TA Strategy
Talent Acquisition Pages and Processes
Team Process Pages
- TA Key Performance Indicators Note: this page is currently in our internal handbook as they are a work in progress.
- Meeting Cadence
- Talent Acquisition Alignment
- Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Talent Acquisition Initiatives
- Triad Process
- Quarterly Updates Note: Internal only
Shared Definitions
- Job: A job refers to the job title (ex: Customer Support Specialist). This will also be what appears on external job boards. In the case there are multiple positions open that are the same, and we only want to list once, we can have multiple ‘openings’ (see next section) opened within one ‘Job’. Each job will have a unique identifier called a Requisition ID (example- 1001).
- Opening: A job can have multiple openings attached to it (ex: you are hiring 3 Customer Support Specialists. You would then have 1 ‘Job’ and 3 ‘openings’ against that job). A job can have multiple openings against it, but an opening can not be associated with multiple jobs. Each opening will have a unique identifier called an Opening ID (example- 1001-1, 1001-2, 1001-3).
- GHPiD: GHP ID is the link between Adaptive (what we use to track our operating plan) and Greenhouse (our ATS). A GHP ID has a one to one relationship with an Opening ID. It is the key interlock between our hiring plans and our Talent Acquisition activity. This is a custom field in Greenhouse.
Candidate Handbook Pages
Please find pages for potential and active applicants below.
Interviewer Processes
Hiring Manager Processes
Candidate Experience Specialist Processes
Greenhouse integrations you'll need
Recruiters and Sourcers
Opening a job
Get your headcount assignments
Open a req in Greenhouse
Evergreen requisitions
- Creating an evergreen req
- Evergreen req guide
- An Evergreen Job is a requisition that is ‘always open’. More specifically, it is used when we have at least 3 openings for a particular job repeated each quarter. There is then one Evergreen job posted for internal, external and passive candidates. It is important that no candidate is hired to an Evergreen job, and instead is moved to an approved opening (aka an opening with a single corresponding GHPiD). TA Leadership will open EVG roles at the start of a fiscal year, with a quarterly review cadence, by leveraging the hiring plan and attrition assumptions. See the pages above for more information.
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Tips and Tricks
Post a job in Greenhouse
- Post an internal job
- Post an external job
- Using Rules
- Auto-tags
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Tips and Tricks
Req access and permissions
- As a member of the Talent Acquisition team, you have the ability to add team members to view your job with differing layers of access. By default, all team members can access the interview kit & scorecard of someone they’re interviewing and this access does not need to be granted. For team members who require additional access, such as a Hiring Manager or their EBA, you will need to grant that access where appropriate. You can use this guide to help determine the appropriate access.
- As you are deciding what access level someone should have, default to the setting that allows the most confidentiality for a candidate. If a team member does not need access to scorecards, for example, we should be choosing an access level that does not allow them to see them. A job admin (someone with higher level permissions) typically should not be at the same level or a direct report of a job they have access to. Recruiters typically grant only Hiring Manager access - interviewers do not need special access and cannot access scorecards or candidate profiles through Greenhouse.
- To add or remove access in a job, go to ‘job setup’ and click ‘hiring team’. Add or remove access under “Who can see this job?”. Unfortunately, there is no way to bulk add or remove access. You can also add and remove access when creating your job from a template. If you are searching for a team member and cannot find their name, ensure that you do not have filters activated. Do not grant admin access through templates, because this could create problems in the future.
Set up scorecards and interview plans
- There are two elements of a scorecard: the Scorecard section and the Interview Plan section. Both are accessible through Job Setup.
- Scorecard Depending on your department, you may have a lot of your scorecard options pre-filled. R&D scorecards are always set up for you, and may only require small tweaks depending on technical language or job grade.
- Interview Plan
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Tips and Tricks
Interview Stages
Stages Overview
Please note that the names of stages is important, and we should only have stages with the names listed below. Anything outside of these stages will not appear on reporting.
Scorecards are required in all stages that require interviews. Confidential, personal information and disclosures about being part of a protected class are never to be written in scorecards. Recruiters can add salary information into Private Notes outside of the scorecard to maintain confidentiality.
- Get to Know Us: This is an application review stage.
- Qualified: This is the stage where positive applications will be triaged. Candidates can wait here to be scheduled for interviews, to ensure the right mix of well-qualified candidates are screened at the right times.
- Screening: Phone or video interview with a recruiter, scheduled through Calendly.
- Assessment: This is an optional stage where written assignments can be submitted. Learn more here.
- Initial Interview: This is the first video interview with a member of the team, which helps determine if they will move forward to additional interviews. This stage ensures we are utilizing the interviewers’ and candidates’ time thoughtfully, and is typically either a Hiring Manager or Technical interview.
- Team Interview: All other team interviews live here.
- Debrief: This will come after the reference check stage for Engineering requisitions, because the reference checks will be initiated as the Justification (R&D’s process for the Debrief stage) is initiated. For non-Engineering departments, this will be a holding stage where candidates wait until a decision is made, to track the time it takes for us to reach a decision on a candidate who has completed their interviews. See the Engineering’s Justification process.
- Reference Check: The reference check stage can sometimes be done in tandem with the Debrief and Background Check and Offer stages. They can be completed by the Hiring Manager or Recruiter.
- Background Check and Offer: Recruiters move candidates into this stage once they’re ready to receive their verbal offer. Before that time, this stage is where an offer is prepared and goes through approvals. This is the final stage in the process.
Scheduling tools in Greenhouse
Greenhouse for internal candidates
- There are a few elements of Greenhouse that are different for internal candidates. Please note that internal candidates refer to current, full time team members. Interns converting to full time, contractors, or rehires are not considered internal candidates.
- Interviews will always be scheduled as “private” events to ensure the candidate’s privacy. Interviews will show up as “busy” events on candidate and interviewers calendars rather than showing as interviews.
- If internal applicants apply via our internal job board, the yellow “internal applicant” tag will automatically show in the GH profile. If you don’t see this tag, you can add it by navigating to the “Details” tab in GH and scroll down to “Source & Responsibility”. Click the pencil next to Source and select Internal Applicant from the drop down.
- CES will use the internal applicant’s Google Calendar to find an appropriate time for them to meet, and do not need to be sent an availability email.
- Former GitLab team members who re-apply are not considered internal candidates. Their source should be whatever they used to apply (ie application), and you should add a “Former Team Member” tag to their profile.
Candidate Hygiene
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Merging candidates
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Adding or transferring candidates between jobs
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Rejecting candidates
Offers and Closing Reqs
Reference Checks
- Reference check information
- Reference check forms are mandatory. If you receive reference check information outside of the form and don’t want a candidate to fill it out again, Enablement can help you adjust the form to collect the remaining information. These forms are important because they provide necessary information for the accuracy and completion of a contract.
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Tips and Tricks
Offers
- Creating an offer in Greenhouse
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Common approval challenges
Background screens
- Contact the Senior Background Check Specialist at backgroundchecks@gitlab.com with any questions or requests for status updates.
- The most commonly asked question for candidates outside the US is, “Why can’t I enter more than one past employer?” Outside of the US, candidates will only submit one former employer and Sterling is working as expected.
Sourcing at GitLab
Notifications
There are no perfect or required ways to set up your Greenhouse notifications, but these are some of our recommendations.
Slack
- To set up Slack to notify you when you’re tagged in candidate notes, select your initials in the upper right hand corner of Greenhouse. From there, you can activate your Slack integration. Toggle the button to send @mentions to Slack. This is also a great button to point out to Hiring Managers so they are easier for the team to reach.
- Additionally, you will see a section for “Notification Preferences”. Most recruiters will set these up, but they are optional if you prefer to only receive notifications by email.
Email notifications
- There are two ways to set up your email notifications. The first is to select your initials in the top right corner of Greenhouse, and under “notification preferences”, select where you would like to receive notifications about jobs. This is an easy way for Hiring Managers to set up their preferences for all jobs at once, but may not be as easy for the Talent Acquisition team to remember to update.
- Instead, we would recommend setting your reminders either during your job setup process or after, by clicking into your Notifications tab of an individual job’s Job Setup. Here, we recommend that you stay in the loop on your candidates by electing to receive emails every time a scorecard is submitted, an internal candidate applies, a referral is submitted, and an offer is fully approved. You can choose your name or “Candidate’s Recruiter”, but you’ll want to be sure that you’re listed as the recruiter on the role to make this work. Recruiters should double check during this time that no one is receiving notifications that should not (ie an interviewer receiving offer notifications) and adjust privacy settings accordingly.
- You can sync your emails between Greenhouse and Gmail. Greenhouse has a Gmail add-on that can help with syncing communications. You can learn more about it by going here.
Talent Acquisition Programs
Referrals
Acquisitions
Internal Mobility
Executive Hiring
Emerging Talent
Global Hiring Resources
Global hiring links
- The “country hiring status” section within the compensation calculator is the best place to look for a list of current countries available for hiring.
- This country list, maintained by and accessible to recruiters, details specific information about each country that can help you answer candidate questions and prepare for potential hiring delays.
- For general questions about specific policies or whether we support certain types of visas or sponsorship, message #people-group-confidential. If the request is more involved, or requires a conversation, you can slack Harley Devlin.
PEO information and timelines
- For candidates who are located in Countries where we do not have an entity, we use a PEO (Professional Employment Organization). The actual employment contracts will be sent and issued by the PEO who also handles the processing and payment of payroll and associated taxes and compliance in each of the countries on behalf of GitLab. The contracts themselves are between the individual and the PEO.
- GitLab is currently hiring into three PEOs
- Remote.com
- Global Upside
- Papaya
- The following timelines to onboarding are advised:
Remote.com: remote.com onboarding timeline
Country | Working days |
---|---|
Austria | 9 |
Denmark | 9 |
Hungary | 9 |
Italy | 9 |
Mexico | 3 |
South Africa | 5 |
Spain | 7 |
Switzerland | 7 |
Global Upside:
Country | Working days |
---|---|
India | 7 business days |
Philippines | 17 ( Including 7 business days for pre hire medical test and 3 business days for social registration) |
Kenya | 7 business days |
Costa Rica | 12 ( Including 5 business days for social registration) |
Latvia | 8 ( Including 1 business day for social registration) |
Chile | 12 ( Including 5 business days for social registration) |
Papaya
Processing for the United Arab Emirates could take up to a month, so we recommend start dates at least 6 weeks after the offer is generated.
Other Hiring Pages
Additional Resources
- Overview of Job Families
- Background checks
- Benefits
- Compensation
- Contracts
- GitLab talent ambassador
- Onboarding
- Stock options
- Visas
Conducting a GitLab Interview
Emerging Talent @ GitLab
GitLab talent ambassador
Greenhouse
Guide
Interviewer Prep Requirements
Job Families
MERGE: Ongoing Development for Associate Engineers
Prelude
Referral Operations
Referral Process
Sourcing
Talent Acquisition Alignment
Talent Acquisition Meeting Cadence
Talent Acquisition Process Framework
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