I’m Maggie Carabello. I work for Grafana Labs as a Senior Talent Manager.

I joined Grafana Labs in August of 2020 as one of 3 Talent Managers. In just over a year, Grafana has more than quadrupled and our Talent Team has scaled to 11 recruiters globally. With our incredible hypergrowth, my role has evolved from being an individual contributor supporting the hiring of our sales team to running our Global Sales Recruiting function and managing a team of 3.

Our growth has allowed my team and I to gain experience in recruiting across the world including Singapore, Australia, Germany, France, Mexico and more. With our ambitious hiring goals quarter after quarter, I strive to empower my team to hire the best talent while providing personal growth and opportunity for each of them along the way.

How big is it?

My team's speciality and focus is to support Global Sales Recruiting and is made up of 1 Sales Recruiter, 1 GTM Recruiter and 1 Sourcer. We are part of a broader recruiting team who focuses on G&A, R&D and other GTM functions.‍

Where are your teammates located?

Grafana Labs has always been a globally distributed, remote company with the focus being on hiring great talent regardless of location. While members of our Talent Team are located in the US and Netherlands, my team sits in Los Angeles, Boston and New York.

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?

Our focus is to help Grafana scale and hire the best talent that’s out there. When Grafana Labs raised a $220m Series C in August of 2021, our team kicked hiring into full gear to fulfill the open headcount needs of the business. To date, we doubled our headcount in 2021 and now have over 500 employees in more than 40 countries. We ensure the company’s hiring goals are met and that we present top talent to hiring managers and make attractive, competitive offers to candidates while delivering the best hiring experience for all involved.

Grafana Labs has been remote since the beginning with our 3 founders starting the company from 3 different continents. Fast forward to today with over 500 employees on 6 continents, we communicate asynchronously, work autonomously, and take accountability for our work.

Working for a remote-first company allows my team and I to be productive regardless of our location and the balance between work and personal life is stronger than ever. Hiring employees across the world has also enhanced the diversity at Grafana by bringing different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences together in one place.

The best part is, even though we’re distributed, we still stay engaged and connected with one another. Our team is great at celebrating our life events with one another by sharing photos, exchanging stories and taking the time to get to know one another personally. Despite the physical distance between us, we remain connected as ever.

Being part of, and managing, a remote team across different countries and time zones can be challenging. As management, we’ve really focused on ensuring no one feels out of the loop or unable to balance their work and personal life. We do our best to schedule meetings at times that work for all and we share team updates in centralized places for everyone to access so no one is left out of the loop.

We love to get together as a team! Before Covid, our Talent Team did an in-person meetup with our People Team in the UK. Since then, we have Social Hours after our bi-weekly team meeting with different games run by members of the team. We’ve had pub trivia, bingo and in Q4 we’ll be hosting our first Talent Team QBR to share our accomplishments with one another.

We utilize Slack channels to stay connected and build rapport with one another. We have a channel for everyone and everything, Womxn of Grafana, Peloton, Pride and Pets & Babies. Sharing our personal interests with our colleagues helps our culture stay in tact and the variety of channels make sure everyone within the company can participate.

I have a group of female leaders in tech whose experiences and opinions I value greatly. We can bounce ideas off each other, ask for help and guidance in different situations, and just connect with one another.

I’m also a member to several LinkedIn Groups focused on Diversity and Inclusion and Women in Tech and the variety of topics and conversations in the group keep me improving and growing as a leader.