Referral Operations

1. You are here:
2. Handbook
3. Hiring
4. Referral Operations

Maintained by:

On this page

• Referral Operations
  • Adding a Referral to BambooHR (People Experience)
  • Transferring Referral Submissions to Greenhouse
  • How to Respond to Referral Update Requests
  • Referral Roundup Sessions
  • Referral Rejection Notifications
  • Ensuring Referral Confidentiality

Referral Operations

This page is for information regarding the “backend” of the Referral Process.

Adding a Referral to BambooHR (People Experience)

During the onboarding process, a People Experience Associate will complete the following steps if a new team member was referred by current team member.

1. Ensure that the current team member is eligible for a referral based upon the requirements.
2. Review when the referral was submitted in Greenhouse
   • Job > Application Review > Applied On YYYY-MMM-DD
   • If the referral was submitted on or before 2020-04-09, then the following referral amounts apply:
     • $1,000 base referral bonus for a new hire.
     • $500 supplemental referral bonus for a hire from a Location factor less than 0.65.
     • $1,000 supplemental referral bonus for a hire from an underrepresented group.
   • If the referral was submitted after 2020-04-10, then refer to the bonus amounts listed here.
3. Add a note in the new team member's BambooHR profile with the name of their referrer.
4. Open the Current Team Members BHR profile
   • Job tab > Bonus table > Add Bonus
   • Add the Bonus Date = 90 day + Hire Date
   • Bonus Amount: Review above
   • Bonus Type: Referral Bonus
   • Bonus Comment: "Referred (New Team Members) - submitted on (submit date) and add if location factor or underrepresented group"

Transferring Referral Submissions to Greenhouse

Per the current Referral Submission Process, Team Members will submit their referrals via Issues. When a new Issue appears, please do the following:

1. Assign the Issue to yourself (upper right corner).
2. Open Greenhouse and click + > Add a Referral.
3. Reference the Issue to see what should be entered in the following fields:
   • Job
     • If a specific requisition is not specified, follow-up with the referring Team Member to determine the appropriate role as "general" referrals are not accepted.
   • First Name - Required
   • Last Name - Required
   • Email - Required
   • Social Media - Required
     • e.g. LinkedIn
   • Resume - Optional
   • Relationship - Required
   • Location - Required
   • Referral's Email - Required
   • Work History - Optional
   • When We Reach Out - Optional
   • Referral Notes - Optional
4. Click Add this referral to submit them.
5. Go to the candidate's profile, click the Details tab, and scroll down to the Source & Responsibility section.
6. Hover over Source and click the Pencil icon, then edit Who Gets Credit with the name of the Referrer and click Update Source.
7. In the Make a Note box, write something similar to the following:
   • "Submitting referral on behalf of REFERRER_NAME for Req # XXXX."
   • Please be sure to @-mention the requisition's Recruiter.
8. Send a email to the referred candidate. Select Email REFERRAL_NAME in the right column and select the Default Referral Confirmation Receipt email template.
   • Make sure that the email is sent from the no-reply@gitlab alias.
   • Add the referring Team Member to the CC field.
   • Click Send Email.
9. Follow-up in the Issue and confirm that the referral has been submitted and please mention that the Team Member will be able to follow their referral in the My Referrals section of their Greenhouse dashboard.
10. Close the Issue.

How to Respond to Referral Update Requests

The Recruiting Team uses the GitLab Service Desk to track incoming emails to the referral@gitlab email. These emails will, in turn, show up as Issues.

To set-up notifications for the Referral Service Desk Project, please do the following:

1. Click on the Bell icon in the upper right corner (next to Star and Clone).
2. Go to Custom Settings.
3. Click New Issue.
4. Close the window.

To take action on Issues in that project:

1. Click Issues in the left menu bar.
   • This is where incoming referral@ emails will be; any open Issues here will need to be addressed.
2. Click on the new Issue.
3. Assign it to yourself (upper right corner).
4. Read the Issue.
5. Add the appropriate label(s).
6. Look-up the candidate in Greenhouse, if applicable.
7. Respond to the Issue by commenting and please be sure to do so just as you would with any other GitLab communication.
   • e.g. "Hi, NAME. Thank you for reaching out about the status of your referral. Per our SLA, please allow us 10-days to review the submission. @RECRUITER is responsible for this role and they’ll provide the candidate with an update soon."
   • e.g. "Thank you for the referral. @RECRUITER is responsible for this role and will provide you with an update soon."
8. Please be sure to @-mention the responsible Recruiter so that they’re aware an update is being requested.
9. If one comment addresses the entirety of the message, comment and close the Issue. If further information is needed, comment and leave the Issue open.
10. The Recruiter will reassign the Issue to themselves once they pickup the communication. They may also add any applicable labels.
11. The Assignee will close the Issue when communication is complete.

Referral Roundup Sessions

Our Recruiting Team occasionally organizes Referral Roundup Sessions.

The objective of theses sessions are to gather referrals, region-specific information about where you're based, and teach you skills related to sourcing and Greenhouse.

We'll invite Team Members who are based in areas with a location factor less than or equal to .58 to theses sessions.

Each session will have a corresponding Issue linked and in that, we ask that you please add information regarding appropriate companies to source from, local meet-up groups, conferences, job boards to advertise on, and any other information you believe will be beneficial to our recruiting efforts in your area.

A Recruiting Team Member will attend these sessions, so they be able to address any questions that arise on sourcing, LinkedIn, or Greenhouse.

Referral Rejection Notifications

In the event that a Referral is rejected based on their location factor the following steps will need to be taken by the requisition's Recruiter:

1. Send the rejection email to the candidate via Greenhouse using the Referral Declined - Not ELF template.
2. Search for the closed referral submission Issue for the respective candidate and add the following comment:

Thank you again for submitting CANDIDATE_FIRST_NAME to the REQUISITION_TITLE role.

Unfortunately, we’re unable to move forward with CANDIDATE_FIRST_NAME’s candidacy right now because they are located in a higher location factor area. With our outbound hiring model, the > Recruiting team is focused on building a more diverse team in the most efficient way. This allows us to support our all-remote vision: to spread opportunity to underserved locales, and to influence the increase of wages for remote work outside of metro areas.

CANDIDATE_FIRST_NAME has received an email from our team explaining this. We’ve also added some clarity about this in the Referral Submission Issue Template now to be sure team members consider this before they submit their referral.

We appreciate your understanding and hope you’ll continue to refer talented people to GitLab!

Ensuring Referral Confidentiality

Once a week, a Recruiting Operations & Insights Team Member will check to make sure that all submitted referral Issues are marked as Confidential.

To do that, please take the following steps:

1. Navigate to the Issues section of the Referrals Project.
2. Clicked on Closed Issues.
3. Set the following filter: Confidential = No and run the search.
4. If any Issues appear, please edit the Confidentiality section in the right column.