Repo Access: Temporary, Audited Work Samples Without Leaks

It is 9:20 AM. Your VP Engineering pings you: "Why is a candidate commenting on a private architecture doc in GitHub?" The hiring manager just shared a repo link in an email thread to speed up a work-sample test. The candidate asked smart questions, then cloned more than the exercise folder, found an internal roadmap, and opened an issue referencing a customer name in a test fixture. Now Legal is asking who authorized access, Security is asking what was exposed, and you are stuck explaining why a hiring workflow created an avoidable audit finding. By the end of this playbook, you will be able to run real-code work samples with temporary, audited repo access that is reversible, privacy-aware, and defensible when a candidate disputes the outcome.

Real-code work samples can reduce "false signal" from AI-assisted answers because the candidate must navigate your conventions, tests, and constraints. The catch: the closer you get to production reality, the more you must treat access as a controlled event, not a casual link share. Fraud is part of this story too. Checkr reports that 31% of hiring managers say they have interviewed a candidate who later turned out to be using a false identity. Directionally, that implies identity and access controls belong earlier in the funnel, not just at offer. It does not prove that every remote role is affected equally, or that repo access is the root cause, but it is enough to justify guardrails that assume some percentage of attempts are adversarial.

This is where programs succeed or die. If repo access is "owned by whoever is in a hurry," you will get inconsistent candidate treatment and reviewer fatigue when incidents happen. Recommended ownership model: Recruiting Ops owns the workflow design, candidate comms templates, and the gating steps in the ATS. Security owns the access policy, logging requirements, and data minimization rules. Hiring Managers own the rubric and the technical evaluation, including code playback review. Automation vs manual review: Automate access provisioning (JIT), expiration, and event logging. Automate binding events to the requisition and candidate record. Manually review only exceptions: access failures, suspicious activity, or scoring disputes. Systems of truth: ATS is the system of record for stages and decisions. Your version control platform is the system of record for access events and code diffs. The verification service is the system of record for identity proofing outcomes and any step-up checks.

Use this as a starting point for a policy your Recruiting Ops and Security teams can co-own. It is written to be implementable: it defines scope, TTL, logging, and what gets attached to an Evidence Pack in the ATS.

These three patterns increase both fraud risk and candidate complaints because they are inconsistent and hard to audit.

CHRO anxiety is not only "did we get hacked," it is "will this look arbitrary." A work-sample program becomes reputationally expensive when candidates claim inconsistent evaluation or when internal teams cannot explain a decision six weeks later. A defensible dispute flow is lightweight: If a candidate appeals, you replay evidence. You do not re-run the entire process. Review the PR or patch, the rubric, and the access log. If there is ambiguity (for example, tooling failed), allow a bounded retake with a new access window and a recorded environment check. Capture the outcome as an addendum to the Evidence Pack so future audits see the full story.

IntegrityLens AI is the first hiring pipeline that combines a full Applicant Tracking System with advanced biometric identity verification, AI screening, and technical assessments so you stop juggling tools and keep decisions defensible. For secure work samples, IntegrityLens keeps the workflow in one place: TA leaders and recruiting ops teams orchestrate stages in the ATS, CISOs get auditable verification and fraud signals, and hiring managers get review-ready submissions. Key fit points for repo-access work samples: You can verify identity in under three minutes before access is granted, run async AI screening interviews 24/7 to reduce scheduling drag, and standardize technical assessments (40+ languages) alongside real-code exercises, with Evidence Packs tying it together.

When teams move from ad hoc repo sharing to time-boxed, logged access with standardized submissions, the improvement is mostly in controllability and dispute handling. You spend less time in war rooms reconstructing who granted what, and more time hiring. Qualitative outcomes you should expect (not a numeric guarantee): fewer last-minute escalations to Security for "mystery access," faster reviewer alignment because every submission arrives in the same format, and better candidate trust because the process is consistent and reversible.