I applied online and got rejected with a form letter at the first stage.
I'm writing this since I didn't think much of it and to maybe save someone else some time:
First stage was 1 CV, 1 cover letter, 3 questions - 1 simple 2 complicated.
The two complicated questions were the sort that would normally be asked in a 45-90 minute in person technical interview. As such, to answer them well takes in the thousands of words.
In a way this means they've merged what I normally experience as two separate stages into a single stage - a CV screen and a technical interview.
This makes it more efficient for them, but it means that applicants waste _a lot_ of time at this first stage writing technical answers that I suspect are never read because their CV didn't pass.
In hindsight, I'd not have bothered applying at all. I spent all up a full afternoon on this application, and as far as I could tell my efforts were not worth a single word of human written reply to them.
Almost all companies I apply for have a much more personable experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The questions asked at this stage are visible to the public, by clicking apply now from their job site. They differ by role.
The process started fine but after making the homework they've told me that the position was moved to another country, After the position apeared agian in my area I've recent my CV wanting to finish the process but they've never got back to me.
Pretty straight forward interview which is on their handbook.
Initial screening then reviewing a merge request.
Technical was with hiring manager which is a mic of technical and behavioural.
Practise more STAR format questions for this stage
I applied online. I interviewed at GitLab in Nov 2025
Interview
The frontend and backend interviews were great. The interviewers were calm and level-headed and allowed me to showcase my technical strengths. The hiring manager interviews were not as great. Different hiring managers have different ways of interviewing and you're guessing what it is they want to hear. I think GitLab needs to work on standardizing this process and training interviewers how to interview. In the first interview, the example story I gave was clearly not a fit for the interviewing. Perhaps they could have mentioned that and pivoted, or initially mentioned what they were looking for. In the second interview, I was given feedback for not mentioning things that the interviewer did not even ask. You can't have a candidate who was given incredible feedback on the technical stages (as mentioned by the recruiters and the hiring managers) and barely passing HM rounds. There's a clear mismatch here. Interviewing is a hard thing in general in the software engineering field, and it's something every IC & EM need to work on.
