The speed with which we can grow our team is dependent on the rate at which we find qualified candidates, and the purpose of sourcing is to generate a large list of qualified potential candidates for our open roles.
Sourcing has proved itself to be a great channel for attracting the best talent. It allows us to grow GitLab and build an even more diverse team in the most efficient way possible, while also sustaining our culture.
"Sourcing", in general, means that you don't know and would not be able to speak about the candidate confidently in a professional sense with GitLab. At best, your sentiment might be, "They seem qualified".
If you'd like to start contributing to our sourcing efffort - we recommend you going through our internal Sourcing Guide, that contains a lot of useful sourcing tips & tricks and gathers together our team resources.
Note: If you know a candidate from school, previous companies, seminars… even among your neighbors or family members - please refer them by creating an Issue in the Referrals Project
More information about the Referrals can be found on the Referral Process page.
For anyone that you do not have a personal relationship with, please add them as a Prospect in Greenhouse and keep in mind that Greenhouse is our single source of truth. Here's how to do that:
Step by Step Example
I've found someone who might be suitable for our Backend Engineer role, simply use their name or email address to check on Greenhouse to see their status –> Add them as a prospect on Greenhouse –> Once they replied with interests, please convert them into Candidates on the Greenhouse! You can also check out our Greenhouse Tips and Tricks document to find more information on Greenhouse usage.
About Sourcing Channels
The most efficient way to source candidates for any vacancy is to search through a professional network, such as LinkedIn, AngelList, etc. Professional networks make it easy to scan a person's skill set and professional background quickly and efficiently and are designed to present their best impression to potential employers.
We encourage our team members to think out of the box and source creatively! For some positions, other networks may prove useful as well - for example, we are looking for someone who has public speaking experience combined with specific tech expertise. Sourcer can go on Youtube and search for candidates who have spoken at the seminars or professional conferences before and try to search for the person's name and suitable ways to contact them.
About Reaching Out to Candidates
When you have identified someone as a good potential candidate, send their profile along with any requested information to a Sourcer so they can reach out to the candidate and add them to Greenhouse. You can check the Sourcer alignment here.
If you want to reach out to a sourced candidate directly you can refer to our internal Reach out Templates deck, check out the internal Sourcing emails repo or create your own message. Kindly discuss your communication strategy with your Sourcing partner to avoid duplication and poor candidate experience.
Take a look at these talent brand resources for the latest team member count, employer awards, blog posts, and more facts about working at GitLab. These resources are meant to help guide your outreach to potential candidates.
Engagement of Candidates within the Talent Acquisition Team
The process of contacting the candidates are as per the following scenarios:
Diversity
In accordance to our values of diversity, inclusion and belonging, and to build teams as diverse as our users, Talent Acquisition provides a collection of diversity sourcing tools here to expand our hiring teams’ candidate pipelines. If you have any questions on how to implement these resources into your current sourcing strategy or have suggestions for new tools, please reach out to the Talent Acquisition team.
We're eager to provide hiring managers and all hiring team members with a LinkedIn Recruiter seat. To upgrade your seat, please add your GitLab email to your LinkedIn profile (Login to Linkedin > click Me > Settings & Privacy > Sign in & security > Email addresses > add your GitLab email address and verify it.
), then submit an Access Request Issue using the LinkedIn Access Request template within the Recruiting Operations project. To integrate your LinkedIn account with Greenhouse, please refer to the Enabling LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect section on the Greenhouse page.
You can request one of the following seats (we recommend requesting a Recruiter seat):
Based on LinkedIn's research, passive candidates are more likely to respond to direct outreach from the hiring team member than from a talent acquisition team. That's why we're encouraging greater adoption and use of LinkedIn Recruiter company-wide.
New to LinkedIn? Use LinkedIn Boolean hacks spreadsheet. Follow the instruction on the sheet, discuss with your Sourcing partner the keywords.
Please reach out to your recruiter for tips on how to improve your LinkedIn profile, write an InMail, and use Projects.
Please note, we won't be able to reimburse any LinkedIn seats purchased at your own expense.
If you're locked out of your LinkedIn account with no way to confirm your identification via 2 Step Verification, you are able to turn off 2 Step Verification.
The Sourcing Team has two seats for LinkedIn's Talent Insights product. Talent Insights is a platform that is specialized in answering business questions regarding workforce planning, talent pools, competitive hiring analysis, and more from its database that exceeds 705 million members, 50 million companies, 20 million jobs, and 90,000 schools. The use of this tool is helpful in determining the diversity of a talent pool (LinkedIn's best guess based on provided profile information), regional talent availability, and competitor analysis. To request such insights, please submit an Issue here using the LinkedIn Talent Insights Request template.
Once a report has been run, it can be exported in either a .PDF or .CSV format; the latter allowing you to filter and segment the data. All reports will be uploaded to the LinkedIn Talent Insights Reports project. If there's a report in that project that you'd like refreshed, please submit a new request Issue.
If you're not sure who is your Sourcing Partner, please visit our Talent Acquisition Alignment page or reach out to the Sourcing Manager.
We welcome knowledge sharing within the team and use #sourcing-hacks Slack channel for market and industry updates and would appreciate your contributions.
If you'd like to tag the Sourcing team in an issue or merge request, you can use the @gl-sourcing handle.
Inbound Sourcing is a specialized sourcing team that focuses on the inbound applicant channels: Applied, Referrals, and Internal. Inbound Sourcing's primary task is ensuring that applications are processed in a timely manner.
Sourcing Session is a required step of the talent acquisition process for every role at GitLab. These sessions help us to ensure that we look for outbound talent and leverage our sourcing effort for all the roles we’re hiring for.
Once a new role is opened, Sourcer assigned to the role will discuss with Recruiter and Hiring Manager who should participate in the Sourcing session and schedule it within 5 business days after the kickoff call.
You can find more information about Sourcing Sessions on the Talent Acquisition Process page.
As our company continues to see rapid growth, we need to aim to hire the best talent out there and we want all GitLab team members to partner with the Talent Acquisition team on building the greatest GitLab crew! We ask you all to contribute by digging into LinkedIn or your favorite social media space and add candidates to the spreadsheet or LinkedIn project. By doing this, we are reaching out to people that are very closely aligned with the team’s needs and finding better-suited candidates. Source-a-thons also service as an important source of potential candidates from diverse locations and backgrounds.
Save the sourcing strings for future reference to the project to help generate new strings from different perspectives.
When you source a candidate and provide their information to our sourcing team, you can expect that they will receive an email or inmail asking them if they’re interested in talking about an opportunity to discuss the position. The sourcer will then upload their profile from LinkedIn to our applicant tracking system and tag their name as sourcer to follow their candidacy through the process.
We do try to personalize these emails or inmails as much as feasibly possible so that they are not impersonal or "spammy," and we rely on the team sourcing to identify relevant and qualified candidates to ensure these messages are as meaningful as possible.
View Linkedin Training slide to understand the boolean logic. Don't have time to set up your own boolean search? Use our smart boolean search builder!
How to source through LinkedIn our Greenhouse database
Simply add all your filters as described above in the LinkedIn Recruiter sourcing section. After setting up your search paramenters add one extra: “In ATS” - here add Greenhouse. This will show you all the people who match your search and are in our database AND also have a LinkedIn! Please note this will not show you absolutely everybody in Greenhouse.
Bonus Greenhouse sourcing tip
You can download in bulk in an XLS file several profiles and you can run your searches in the spreadsheet. For this click on the blue “Export” button on the top of your search results in the “All candidates” section of a search result tab.
Teams might have different hiring criterias depending on technology, field, product area etc. This can also change with time. Sometimes we might need a candidate who needs a clearance or has multiple endorsements for Ruby, tenure at established/strong Rails companies, startup/product experience or has to meet our longevity requirements. To make sure you search is aligned with the specifics of that role/team check the kickoff meeting details of that role.
Here's an example workflow for sourcing Product Design candidates:
Projects from the top banner. Here you will need to either start a new project by naming it Product Designer - stage group, or open an existing project if the Recruiter has already shared one with you.Talent pool tab.job title search box on the left of the interface. You can input Product Designer to search for anyone who has held this title in their current or past role. If you're following a tree ring strategy, you should select current from the dropdown. In an exisiting project, you can delete all the information as this will be saved by the Recruiter. You can then start your search using the job title field.current company search box. Here, you can input the names of organizations you noted at the start of this process.current job title, you may also wish to broaden the search by selecting current or past in the job title search field.UX Designer, Visual Designer, or Interaction Designer, if you believe someone with that title will be relevant for the role you're sourcing for.Saving your search
If you're looking to come back to the same search at a later date, you can save the search string by selecting the save icon. This is found next to showing results for at the top of the search box.
When you wish to come back to the saved search, you can find it by opening search history and alerts. Again, this is at the top of the search box on the left side of the screen.
Some things to keep in mind when sourcing Product Designers:
portfolio on their profile, it can found below their profile header, and above their background summary.Enterprise is a powerful boolean search modifier when sourcing for GitLab. Many product design candidates who have the type of experience we look for will list enterprise software, enterprise teams, enterprise products, or enterprise applications within their online profile.Portfolio (insert candidate name) can successfully bring up the candidate's online work. However, this work may be out of date, not representative of the Product Designer's current skill set, or the work of somebody else (this is especially common when a Product Designer has a commonly held name).