We expect every teammate, team, and our company to live up to the Sourcegraph values. It is therefore important that we evaluate every candidate on the values to determine how successful they will be within Sourcegraph. Because of this, all candidates, regardless of level or role, go through a values interview as part of their interview process with Sourcegraph.
The purpose of the Values Interview is to ensure that the candidate embodies our core values. It is not a skills assessment. Rather, the goal of the interview is to determine whether candidates can positively contribute to our core values. This is just as important as determining if they have the skill and will to perform the duties of the role.
Workplaces are a version of a community. In any community where you want people to figure out how to work together effectively, it can be helpful to have a common set of guiding principles. Understanding how intrinsically aligned a candidate might be to our guiding principles makes it more clear as to what will be easy and what will be hard for them if they come into this environment. Will they need coaching or might they be an example? I think about it as an alignment exercise to determine what they are going to add that could potentially enhance our values and take them to the next stage as our community at Sourcegraph continues to grow and evolve.
Candidates are brand ambassadors, regardless of whether we hire them or not and candidate experience should be a top priority. We want to ensure we're hiring people who are going to enhance our values, and who believe in them the way that we do. On the flip side, it provides a really great candidate experience and it allows our candidates to truly realize that we don't just put values in our handbook, but we actually live them and breed them.
The Values Interview is also important for the candidate for a couple of reasons. Not only does it give candidates direct exposure to our DNA, our makeup, and why our values are important—it also gives them the opportunity to meet people outside of the respective department for which they're interviewing. For example, if somebody is interviewing for a sales role, they could meet with somebody from the marketing and/or finance team. Not only does the candidate have the opportunity to see that our values are really important, but they also have the opportunity to meet a diverse set of teammates. They have the opportunity to ask why people outside of their respective departments work at Sourcegraph.
While we don't want to unconsciously hire new teammates who are clones of us, having a way of getting a signal on their values is critical. The interview ensures that we are remaining dedicated to our core values as we scale and grow. The right hires who contribute, enhance, and add to our values will positively impact the future of our business.
The Values Interview is also a great way for us as teammates to reinforce what our values are at Sourcegraph. This interview will serve as one of the many ways in which we can continuously keep them top of mind and think of them without having to put them on a wall. We want to embody them and this is a great way to be talking about them a lot more regularly.
All teammates who have been at Sourcegraph for 3+ months are eligible to conduct a values interview.
The purpose of the values interview is to determine if the candidate embodies and exemplifies our values. It is not meant to be a skill assessment, and should only focus on Sourcegraph's values. One member of the values team will opt in as a lead (this person is the one who begins the introduction and asks the first question), and then you will alternate asking questions with the other member of the values team.