 Hello, and thank you for attending our first ever open house for EMEA and APAC. Welcome, my name is Maria, I'm based out of London. Any other Londoners feel free to put a plus one in the chat. I'm a senior recruiter for GNA, which includes accounting, finance, legal, HR and business technology. So basically everything but sales, marketing and engineering. And I'm nearing my one year anniversary working at GitLab. Before I get started, I'll pass you over to my colleague Debbie to say a quick hello. Yeah, hi there. I'm Debbie Harris. I'm based in West Cork in Ireland. And I am a senior recruiter working on mostly sales, channel and customer success roles. We are both here today to share some tips and tricks on how to interview in a remote setting. And of course, there will be time set aside Q&A at the end. So please do add any questions to the Google Doc and we'll cover these. And if we run out of time, we will respond asynchronously after the session. Thank you. Thanks Debbie. So a brief introduction. We are GitLab and we are all remote as you all know. That means no commute and the added benefit of time we directed to home health family and our community. I know in these strange times the majority of us are all getting a taste of the 100% remote work lifestyle. But GitLab has done it from day one and therefore the company has had a lot of practice within the realms of remote interviewing. We are made up of more than 1300 GitLabers in more than 65 countries to date. We are therefore made up of a really diverse team across the world and most of us have still never met in person. Amazingly, we have built great relationship virtually through the wonders of technology within our teams and across GitLab as a community. We have over 100,000 organisations that co-create with us and we have more than 3000 code contributors to GitLab software. So what are we going to cover today? Firstly, before the remote interview, how to prepare things you need to consider, what to research equipment and how to get ready. Then during the remote interview, how to conduct yourself during the interview and what to think about. Lastly, how to assess a remote company and how to understand if it's the right fit for you and what you're looking for in an organisation. So let's get started. What do we need to start considering before the remote interview? Firstly, you have to prepare. Get to know the company that you're interviewing for. There are over 7000 pages in our handbook covering topics like our values, culture, team pages and other documentation for you to really set the scene for the company and the role. Take your time and do your research to really understand the company that you'll be interviewing with. One of the first questions you're asked to interview could be, so what do you know about said company? So it's great to have this knowledge to hand to show the interviewer you are serious about your application. To GitLab, the values are a massive part of the company, so it is extremely important that a candidate knows and relates with them. Secondly, prepare your questions for the interviewers. It can be about the company, about the team you're interviewing for, processes, their experience working at the company. Again, this will really show that you have a genuine interest to join the company. Your time to really prepare for the interview. Another key aspect to take into consideration is making sure you have to familiarise yourself with the platforms the company is using in the interview process. So check your technology. Make sure you install and get comfortable using the platform. And if you're facing any technical challenges, try to report them before the time of your interview. You should also set up the best possible circumstances for the technology to work. For example, asking others in your household not to stream TV while you're doing the interview. Hold a practice interview with a friend or a family member to make sure that you are comfortable using the software and they can clearly hear and see you. Here at GitLab we use Zoom, but other companies use other software for videos. So ensure you leave time to prepare and download the app so that you have the best possible chance of it working smoothly when the time comes. In addition to software, check your hardware. Use headphones with a microphone ideally. Test your microphone and your camera beforehand. Some people use their phone for video interviews. I've had all their laptops. Just make sure you feel comfortable with whatever you are using and optimise your environment. Try to figure out where you are. At the moment, we're all at home. So optimise your lighting, see the examples in the slides. You need lighting in the front and not behind you. Ensure the angle is straight on so you're not looking up or down at the screen. This may mean elevating the laptop or the camera itself. It's also important to choose a comfortable and quiet place to take the interview with no noise or distractions. This is sometimes challenging in a home environment. I know it can be a strange concept, particularly the first time you do it. I feel like a face-to-face in-person interview just through the screen instead. And make sure you're sitting or standing comfortably. And no one knows you better than you do. So take your time to read and really familiarise yourself with your own CV. Obviously, you know better than anyone your experience, but it's always good to do a recap and really familiarise yourself with your past experience, projects you've been involved in and your career highlights. Be prepared so you can highlight these key things to show that you offer a future employer, show what you can offer a future employer during the interview. And lastly, make a plan and pace yourself. Be aware of the time that's allotted for the interview. It may be 30, 45 minutes, which is typical time blocks at GitLab. Therefore, there can be a lot to cram into that time. Try and be concise and ensure you keep to relevant topics. Prioritise what you want to highlight during the time in the interview to ensure your key transferable skills and experiences covered. Blocks in time before and after the interview to ensure you aren't rushing for the call, but also able to relax during the call knowing you have some time afterwards to reset after the interview. Next, Debbie will continue with a presentation on tips during the remote interview. Thanks, Maria. So Maria touched on how to prepare before a remote interview. So I'll share some things to bear in mind during a remote interview. And some of these will sound obvious, but you would be surprised how often things can be overlooked. So much of the advice we will give can easily apply to a traditional face-to-face interview and so things will sound quite familiar. So some of the key tips, in our opinion, are maintaining eye contact with the interviewer and not forgetting to look into the camera. If you're using several screens in your home office set up, be aware of exactly where your camera is located. Keep your intonation and body language positive and engaging if you were in the interview room physically. Keep calm if things go wrong. Sometimes technology is not on our side and you can encounter problems in a remote interview. This will demonstrate that you know how to deal with challenging situations and are adaptable. Be on time, that might sound obvious, but even though you're remote it's just as unprofessional to keep your interviewer waiting. So put a plus one on the chat if you're like me and have a thousand tabs on your laptop open sometimes. So when on a remote interview, just have your notes and don't browse the internet for answers. The interviewer will notice that you are a bit distracted. Another important aspect is having talking points prepared for your interview because it will show that you are prepared for the interview, demonstrate your understanding of the organisation, relate your experience and knowledge to the job description and the team you're aiming to join. And if you are nervous it can be easy to talk over the interviewer although it helps if you slow down to have things prepared. Keep an eye on the time, make sure you're not going off on a tangent and are answering the question being asked and be succinct, but also mindful to relate your answers to the requirements of the role. Although for GitLab all remote working has always been part of our culture, we are well aware that this setup is new for many people and for many organisations. It was forced by the pandemic but companies and people now more than ever have to adapt to remote. For that reason it is important for you as a candidate to know how to assess a remote company. So one of the first questions you can ask is about onboarding as it is a crucial part of joining a new organisation. How is the onboarding process, the timeline, will it have someone to help me throughout the process like a buddy? Will I have access to all training needed? So for example at GitLab the onboarding is very complete. It includes tasks for managers, IT operations, onboarding buddy and people operations before the first day to ensure the new hire has all the tools, systems and information needed to get started. Then it's divided throughout the week by each task you have to complete. After that you also have a specific onboarding for the team you're actually joining. So the all onboarding process should take at least three to four weeks and we encourage people to take their time with it. This can be very different from company to company so make sure you ask how they handle it. The second question you should ask is how will I communicate since I'm fully remote. This is a question I get quite a lot from candidates. So be sure to ask what tools will be provided. So at GitLab for instance we heavily rely on async versus sync communications. So we use tools like Google Docs to type what is discussed in every meeting. We use Slack for major announcements and sharing. And we use our own platform GitLab.com all the time for sharing projects, pieces of work, discussion areas, et cetera. And of course we rely heavily on our handbook for any updates in our processes and procedures. You may have seen our handbook. I think we've made mention of it a few times. It's an open source document shared with the world about 70,000 pages along and gives you open access to all our processes, procedures, philosophies, thought processes around how we approach work. So we believe in full transparency and it allows candidates and existing team members alike to really get into the detail on what it's like to work for us and answers a lot of questions on how we do things. So the third question for a potential employer could be around the benefits provided. So things like, will I be able to expensify my home office equipment? How does it work, the time off in my country? What are the annual leave allowances? What about salary? Will I be paid accordingly with the country I'm based in? Other benefits like stock options, how does that work? What about working hours? I will have team members in different time zones. So will I need to work these times? Since I'm remote, can I work from wherever I want? If I want to move or relocate, can I move freely? That's just a few things we thought about. Finally, it's also key to ask about your employment type. Am I going to be a full-time employee or have a contract agreement? Since remote companies hire people all over the world, maybe they need to have a few different setups to hire them. We certainly do it GitLab. So it's important to understand the specifics of being full-time or being a contractor, for example. Does my location impact my employment type? Will you be a full-time employee or a contractor and why is this? Having an entity is a viable way of hiring, but having one in each country requires a big investment from the company. So sometimes hiring through a third party or as an independent contractor are other ways of hiring in a location where the company has no entity. So then you would need to consider what the benefits are. Benefits change accordingly with the type of contract. Even where countries may already have specific benefits that are mandatory by law, these can be impacted depending on your work status, and you may find that you need to organise your own pension or your healthcare, for instance. So it is important to understand this ahead of time. GitLab has a page on our handbook, again, open for anyone to read, that outlines exactly the different types, different team member types, and also the countries where we have an entity, the countries where we employ through a PEO company, and also those where, right now, we hire people as contractors. This would help give you an idea of the range of options and possibilities when speaking with a prospective employer. So if you Google GitLab contracts, it will come up first with our page, Contracts and International Expansion. So after all this rambling from us, we wanted to highlight these four words when interviewing remotely. Communication is key during all parts of the interviewing process. It's always important and equally so in a fully remote process. Maintain eye contact, make sure your equipment is working and beyond time. Adaptation is vital as many of you may not have interviewed remotely so much before. Remember, it's just a conversation and we're all human, we just want to get to know you. It's important to show engagement, preparation will help you be confident, show enthusiasm, know about the company and relate your skills to the role. It's just a change of mindset. It will seem awkward to start with, but now everyone is in the same boat, working so much more on Zoom and similar tools. Interviews can be stressful in any situation, but the more preparation you do ahead of time, the more at ease you will be. So that's it. I hope you have all enjoyed taking some positives out of this presentation. I'm now open for Q&A. Please add these to the doc. Also, if you feel more comfortable, you can always send us an email and we will do our best to answer as soon as possible. Thank you. So I'm just looking at the doc. I can't see any then, Maria, can you? As yet. Okay, so we'll just give a few minutes if anyone wants to add any. But for me, I was going to say to you, Maria, the main difference coming to work as a remote company was the flexibility it gave me. And I couldn't get my head around that to start with, but really being able to work from wherever and whenever you want and setting your own daily practices and giving yourself a bit of time during the day to do other things is really valuable. It's made a huge difference to family life, work-life balance, but also means you can really manage your workload effectively. What do you think? Same for you? Yeah, definitely. And I think just, I think with GitLab, as long as you've got it in your diary and people know when they can reach you, then it's okay to nip out a few to walk the dog because it's good to be mindful of this as well. So for me, that flexibility, especially having children, is great to know that I can nip to the school if I needed to and I am just around the corner. So definitely appeal and being manager of one as well. And working your own time and working your own, you know, the hours that you can to get your dog done around everything else as well. Yeah, because it is all about the new results, right, efficiencies, and that's what we're told and that certainly is how it works in practice. And I think the asynchronous work style is fantastic too. So being able to attend all the meetings or review them later on YouTube and look at the documents as well is really a core aspect of that. Yeah, a huge amount of communication which helps in your everyday, definitely. Or you don't never feel like you're missing out on anything, no matter what time zone you're in. No, and it's good, isn't it? If you have an interest in other areas, so if you're really interested in, say, for example, what marketing are doing or what's happening in sales or anywhere really, you know, you could always view those notes to look at what's going on in the gitlab.com platform and also look at the meetings or be on the meetings, which is a goal too. Yeah, it's very transparent. Yeah, and I mean, the remote interviewing aspect, you know, working now as you can, hopefully then you can accommodate the different time zones that candidates are in as well. So you work your diary around that as much as you can. Great. Exactly. Any other questions? No, we obviously answered them all. We've been very efficient. I doubt it, but anyway. I know there's one coming. We've got two questions now. Shall I verbalise? Yeah, two. So we have one question. Do you check reading skills up front? Because some people have a hard time reading a lot of docs. That's a good question. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say we probably don't check reading skills up front. For some roles, for some positions, there are kind of assessment tests and things pertaining to the role, though. So for example, for a technical account manager, we might send them a brief to present on a demo call, things like that. Or for some roles, we ask for a piece of writing to be done. But not specifically reading. That's an interesting one. We'll have to talk to the people group about that and see whether there's something we should think about. Yeah. And Elkhana is saying, what practices did you incorporate in your daily work prior to the interview at GitLab that enabled you to adapt faster to remote in the way that GitLab preferred? That's another good question. That's a really good question. I've worked in the tech industry before, so I'm used to that fast-paced element of life. I was lucky I worked from home a lot and worked in the office, so I had that dual kind of split in my role. I guess practices to incorporate in my daily work. That's a really good question. I don't know, Debbie. I was working in an office for nine years, so I used to have a two-hour commute there and back to get to work for about nine years. And then, of course, suddenly being at home all day with GitLab was very interesting. And I found myself adapting in certain ways in making sure there was a structured time for going for a walk first thing in the morning, making sure there was time to review my emails and all my Slack chats first thing in the morning and prepare for interviews and all of that. So it was probably very similar to how you would, in the office, what you do, but you just learn to adapt to the time and the extra time, actually. I had to be very determined to make sure that the extra time that I got from not commuting that I really made sure I did something really valuable to me with that time rather than simply working harder and for longer. So, yeah, things like getting outside, taking time for the things I enjoy. Yeah, I guess my mornings are just more relaxed now. I don't have to worry about getting the children somewhere before I have to get the train anywhere. But now I get to take the kids to school each morning and I get to walk the dog during the day if I don't do it before work. So it is a lot more relaxed. And I think that actually prepares and sets me up for the day because I can incorporate that exercise into my day each time. And I think we've had to get used to the whole documentation thing as well, which is so valuable. And so it's part of our DNA really now, right? So we just meant everything, including, you know, on all meetings, as we've already said, and communications within group chat, things like that, you know, which helps. I think it just means people can work and find out the answers to questions at any time wherever they are. Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the biggest changes and challenges is keeping up to speed with everything. And using that, you know, as part of your routine, is remembering to look at the Slack channels that you need to be looking at, like updates from GitLab and in general, company FYI and things like that, just to keep up to speed with everything because there's a lot coming through in the night, especially when the US are on, to keep in mind and catch up on in the morning. Yeah, exactly, yeah.