Internship program - planning, recruiting, and offer processes

Internship program planning

The documents below outline the entire 2022 process of creating, preparing, and running the internship program, as well as the retrospective data gained from learnings, stakeholder feedback, and recruiting data. These documents will be used to prepare and run future internship programs.

Internship recruiting process

The recruiting and offer processeses for internship positions are sightly different than full-time roles. This page will outline the correct steps to take for the following.

Opening an intern role

Step 1: Prior to each internship cohort, Leadership will fill out an Intern Request Form to request one or more intern(s) for their team. Then leadership + VP People + Talent will finalize which internship roles we will hire for and assign a Recruiter to each role.

Step 2: The Recruiter will reach out to each Hiring Manager via slack to request the job description and interview plan. The Hiring Manager will be required to develop a job description following the steps in the handbook. The Hiring Manager will also need to fill out an intake form.

Note: For internship interview plans, the only required steps are Recruiter Screen, Hiring Manager Screen, Peer Interview, and Values Interview. Typically, 1 talent team member will conduct each intern Values Interview.

… Once the Hiring Manager completes the above steps, the Recruiter takes the below actions:

Step 3: The Recruiter schedules a 30-minute intake meeting with the Hiring Manager to kick off the search and review the responses to the intake form. The intake meeting is intended for the Hiring Manager and the Recruiter to get on the same page about job requirements, the ideal candidate, and the proposed interview process. This is a necessary step to ensure initial alignment and set our search up for success.

Step 4: The Recruiter then sets up the role in Greenhouse and posts it to our Careers Page.

  • Copy the “Template” job.
  • Build out the interview plan, adding all behavioral-based, structured questions (found in the interview plan directly into each interview stage.
  • All interview stages should use the standard interview titles, found here. When adding Interview Steps, you must follow the following format: ‘Type of Interview’ [Duration]. For example: Hiring Manager Screen [45 min]. It is not acceptable to add any notes or other identifying information in the title of the interview as this will skew our calibration data.

Step 5: The Recruiter creates a Slack channel with the Interview Team and starts the Slack Kick-Off Process:

  • Create a new channel slack channel named: “team-hiring_position_recruiter-name”
    • Example: “product-hiring_product-design-intern_recruiter-kemper”
  • Invite the entire interview panel plus VP Talent, Recruiting Coordinator & Sourcer to the channel
  • Tag VP Talent to make the channel private
  • Once private, send kick off note using the below template:

“Hi team! We are excited to kick off our [hyperlink job description] opening and I appreciate all of you participating in the interview process. I thought it would be helpful to create a Slack channel to stay aligned as we begin interviewing candidates!

As a next step, please:

  • Review the below interview process and qualifications
  • Please share this post to social media to help drive applicants to the role
  • Please review these pages in the handbook:
    • Interview training
    • The interview process
    • Feedback definitions
  • Please review our Guide to Using BrightHire and ensure you download the BrightHire Chrome extension.

Interview process / hiring team:

At a high level, here is an overview of what we’re looking for in this hire. @hiringmanager, please add any additional insight that will be helpful for the hiring team to keep in mind as they interview candidates!

  • Why is this position open:
  • The ideal candidate:
  • Level:
  • Deal breakers:
  • Selling points:
  • Target start date:”

Step 6: The Recruiter begins generating a candidate pool by reviewing applications in Greenhouse and sourcing passive candidates via LinkedIn Recruiter. Once eligible candidates are identified, they are moved to the interview stage.

Identifying Candidates

Information on where we find our candidates can be found here.

Internship Offer Process

Extending an Internship Offer

No references needed. Compensation and leveling has already been confirmed by finance.

Step 1: The Recruiter has a pre-closing conversation with the candidate to confirm mutual-interest. It is very important that the Recruiter makes no offer promises or commitments to the candidate until the offer has been formally approved in Greenhouse.

Step 2: the Recruiter creates an offer in Greenhouse using the below offer data

  • Employment Type - “Intern”
  • Level - “IC1”
  • Percent into comp range - “75%”
  • Equity options - “0”
  • For all other offer fields, follow the standard process.

Approval chain: VP People & Talent > Hiring Manager > Department Head > VP Operations or Financial Planning and Analysis Manager > CEO (Quinn Slack)

We want to hire people who overwhelmingly get Yes and Strong Yes feedback. If the candidate did not receive all Yes and Strong Yes feedback, the Hiring Manager or Recruiter needs to submit written justification for moving forward with offer in the offer approval section. If the candidate received a no during the values interview, follow these steps.

Step 3: Once the offer is fully approved in Greenhouse, Recruiter schedules an offer call using the email template in Greenhouse. The goals of the offer summary call are to:

  • Convey to candidates how excited we are about the prospect of them joining the team and how much value they will add to Sourcegraph.
  • Ensure they have a good understanding of our compensation philosophy, their salary, perks, travel (and benefits, if applicable) and equity.
  • Answer any questions the candidate has and gauge how the candidate is feeling about the opportunity.
  • Before ending the call, be sure to 1) determine a potential start date (all start dates should fall on a cohort Monday and any exceptions to that rule require approval from VP of Talent and People Ops) and 2) schedule a follow-up call to answer any questions.

Attendees: Recruiter, Hiring Manager (optional), Candidate.

To generate the offer summary, click “generate” in the Offer Details section of the candidate’s Greenhouse profile, and select the appropriate offer summary. Recruiter will download the offer summary as a Word Doc, and convert to PDF. Recruiter will then send to the Hiring Manager for review.

Preparation

  • Recruiter needs to ensure the discussed start date falls on the correct Internship Cohort date. We start all interns on the same cohort date, so if the candidate is not able to start on the Cohort Date, Recruiter needs to get approval from VP of People/Talent and Hiring Manager.
  • Make sure you have generated the offer summary letter in advance.
  • Recruiter (and Hiring Manager if attending) calibrate prior to the offer call to make sure there is alignment on how to best approach the call
  • Recruiter (and Hiring Manager if attending) should pick 3-4 of their favorite quotes about the candidate from scorecards submitted by interviewers during the process and reiterate excitement of the potential of them joining the team.

Offer Summary call walkthrough

Each candidate offer summary call will be slightly different, time estimates included as approximation to ensure all points are covered.

  • (2 min) The Recruiter (or Hiring Manager if present) kicks off the call to give the candidate feedback and tell them why we’re excited about them. They will read a few of their favorite feedback quotes from the interviewers.

  • (~15 min) Recruiter shares their screen to display the offer summary document and will walk through each slide with the candidate. After each slide, Recruiter will ask the candidate if they have any questions about the information displayed. Important to ensure the Offer Summary Call is interactive and not a presentation

    • Slides that the recruiter will cover:
      • Total Rewards Summary
      • Your Offer - At a Glance
      • Your Offer - Perks
      • Note: Interns are not eligible for Benefits or Stock Options
  • (~10 min) Recruiter will ask the candidate how they are feeling about the offer and opportunity to gauge the chances of closing the candidate. The recruiter will ask if they feel comfortable to verbally commit.

    • If YES:
      • Recruiter reconfirms with candidate a previously discussed start date.
      • Recruiter covers following topics (Docusign, Welcome email from Ines) etc.
    • If NO:
      • Recruiter will ask to address any concerns on the call. If candidate needs time to think through the offer, Recruiter will schedule a follow up call with candidate within 24 hours.
  • (1 min) Recruiter informs the candidate that they will send a copy of the offer summary right after the call and to reach out if any questions come up. Recruiter (and Hiring Manager if present) reiterate excitement to wrap up. Once the call ends, Recruiter then proceeds to Step 4.

For Recruiters: To see an actual offer summary script, click HERE.

Step 4: Following the offer call, the Recruiter sends the offer summary to the candidate in an email, and Cc’s the Hiring Manager and VP People + Talent.

Step 5: once the candidate verbally accepts the offer, a Recruiting Operations Specialist will draft the offer letter. If the recruiter needs to request the offer letter to be drafted, please follow the below steps:

  • If US-based candidate: make a formal request in the Slack channel talent-scheduling-and-offers for the ‘US Offer Letter - Intern’ letter to be sent via DocuSign.
  • If a non-US based candidate: make a formal request in the Slack channel talent-scheduling-and-offers for a ‘Int’l Offer Letter - Intern’ offer letter to be sent via DocuSign.

The Recruiting Operations Specialist will need to generate the offer template, download it to their computer, update the yellow fields using Microsoft Word, then reupload the offer template into Greenhouse before Sending with Docusign.

All DocuSigns should be routed for signing to VP People + Talent > Candidate and Cc Recruiting@sourcegraph.com, Onboarding@sourcegraph.com and the Hiring Manager

Step 6: the candidate receives the offer.

Reference here on what to do if a candidate declines our offer.

After the Internship offer acceptance

After the candidate formally signs the offer letter via DocuSign, the Recruiter takes the following steps to onboard the new Teammate:

Step 1: via Greenhouse, the Recruiter sends a welcome email to the candidate by selecting the "welcome email from recruiter - US" or the "welcome email from recruiter - Non-US" template, depending on the location of the new intern.

To: the Candidate CC: Recruiting@sourcegraph.com, Onboarding@sourcegraph.com, Hiring Manager This should be sent within 24-hours of acceptance.

Step 2: The Recruiter confirms that the open, start and hired dates are correct, ensuring accurate time-to-fill data.

Step 3: The Recruiter confirms the candidate source information is accurate, ensuring accurate source data.

Step 4: The Recruiter declines all other candidates if we are closing the role / not hiring for multiple positions.

Step 5: The Recruiter marks the candidate as “hired” in Greenhouse.

  • Click the “Mark Candidate as Hired” button found in the “Offer Details” section of the candidate’s profile Select Close Reason: “hire-new headcount”
  • Click either "yes" or "no" in the “Keep Job Open” section. Only keep the job open if we are hiring for multiple openings
  • Select "Yes" for “Make Candidate Private”
  • Select "Yes" for “Export to BambooHR
    • If you don’t see an option to export to Bamboo, please ensure your Bamboo integration is active by following these steps
  • Email a summary of this candidate to:
    • Onboarding Email
    • VP of Talent
    • Hiring Manager

Step 6: the Recruiter sends a “thank you for participating in the interview process” note to the interview team in the role-specific Slack channel

Step 7: : the Recruiter archives the Channel after people respond

Step 8: the Recruiter asks the Hiring Manager to make a announcement of the candidate’s acceptance in the Slack #Hiring channel.

Step 9: The People Operations team then works with the candidate to onboard them and get them set up for their first day! The Tech Ops team will assist with the laptop ordering process.

How to Action a Revoked Offer

If an intern decides not to join us after being marked as Hired in Greenhouse but before their start date, follow these steps.

Actions to complete prior to the internship start date

The Internship Program Manager needs to complete the following actions prior to the internship start date

  • Send People Ops and Tech Ops the final list of intern names, teams, managers, and locations (by Country)
    • Greenhouse integration will add to Bamboo
    • People Ops will onboard
    • Tech Ops will ship laptops
  • Work with People Ops and Hiring Managers to confirm onboarding activities and prepare Process Street for the Interns’ first day
  • Work with Tech Ops team to ensure system access is set up for the interns
  • Confirm with Legal team that the manager training doc is still sufficient for the upcoming cohort
  • Confirm with each intern who is currently on a F1 Student Visa that they:
    • Have obtained an I-20 form from their university - This can take a couple of weeks, so please reach out to the interns at least 2-3 weeks prior to their start date
    • Are prepared to show one or a combo of the documents listed here as part of their I-9 check within their first 2 days.
  • Confirm with PeopleOps that avatars have been created for each intern
  • Create the interns’ new hire video compilation. If the interns are not starting on a cohort start date, the intern program manager will send their video compilation in the #teammateannounce slack channel on their first day.
  • Finalize the social events and learning opportunities that will be included in the internship program
  • Finalize internship schedule. Our goal is to have the interns connect for each of the below items once per week:
    • 1:1 with manager
    • Team Meeting (this may vary depending on the team’s standard meeting cadence)
    • Internship Cohort meeting
    • Internship Event - these will be a mix of social events and learning opportunities
  • Send each Hiring Manager a 30 minute calendar hold for on the interns’ first day. This time will be used for the manager and intern to connect on the following:
    • Welcome the intern
    • Explain what to expect for their first week
    • Review the manager training doc to go over compliance information *This must be done on Day 1!