Episode Overview
Hannah Wolf is a Senior Campus Recruiter and Global Early Career Pipeline Program Manager at Spotify, the very platform you might be listening on. Prior to Spotify, Hannah worked in Recruiting and HR at Yahoo, Bloomberg, Tiffany & Co., and more. Please join me in welcoming her to The Final Round…
Here are some questions we will be answering:
– How to answer the question, “Why Spotify?”
– Do employees at Spotify play/love music?
– What are some ways candidates can put themselves in a position to be connected to career opportunities?
– What are the various programs at Spotify?
– How is an HR role different than a Recruiter role?
– Should your resume have unique design/format/color?
Links:
*Download Hirect App for Free: https://bit.ly/HirectApp
Connect with Hannah: www.linkedin.com/in/hannahwolf1/
Follow our Host on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-aj-eckstein/
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Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this podcast are of the host and guest and not of their employers.
Episode Transcript
“Showing who you are, showing up as you are, know that companies like Spotify like we really, really appreciate people for their uniqueness and their diversity and all aspects of them that kind of experience wise make them who they are. So, keep that in mind.” – Hannah Wolf
Welcome to the Final Round podcast, where our mission is to help you knock out the competition and land your dream job. My name is A.J. Eckstein, and I’m a recent college graduate, a strategy consultant, a five-time intern, and the founder of the Career Coaching Company.
Have you ever wondered why only a few people get past the final round interview and land the job offer? Join me in the ring as I speak with recruiters at top companies to learn the secrets why certain applicants get “knocked-out” and others are still standing after the final round.
This episode is brought to you by Hirect, the first chat-based hiring app. More about them later in the show.
Now, let’s jump into the ring and get you past the final round.
Intros
Today, we are joined by Hannah Wolf, an early career pipeline program manager and former campus recruiting manager at Spotify, the very platform you might be listening on. Prior to Spotify, Hannah worked in recruiting and HR at Yahoo, Bloomberg, Tiffany & Co., and more. Please join me in welcoming her to the Final Round.
What is going on, everybody? Today, we’re going to change things up. Not only we’ll be joined by Hannah Wolf, who is a Senior Campus Recruiter at Spotify, but I will actually be co-hosting this episode with a very special co-host, none other than Sam Kao. Sam, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Sam: Yeah, of course, A.J. It is so exciting to be a co-host for this episode. I’m actually currently on the team at the Final Round and also work in business development as well as content creation. I am also a student at UCLA as well as an avid musician, having played and taught both piano and violin for over 10 years. I can’t think of a better episode to co-host than one about the music industry with a recruiter from Spotify.
Awesome. Well, Sam, we’re so lucky to have you on and without further ado, I’d love for you to help me welcome none other than Hannah Wolf to the show. Hannah, how are you doing today?
Hannah: Hey, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on the pod.
It is such a pleasure. Again, I think Spotify has been a company that a ton of our audience has been really trying to get on the show and I think you are such an amazing recruiter to really represent the company and everything that they’re about. Obviously, Spotify has not only been in the news recently. They’ve been doing a ton of acquisitions in the podcast space and obviously us being a podcast using different podcast platforms like Anchor for distribution, it’s such a relevant company to be represented on the podcast. So, I first want to start with something. We were doing a ton of research on you, Hannah, and we started with your LinkedIn. In your LinkedIn About Section, it says that you are a professional matchmaker aka campus recruiter. So, I’d be curious to know what are some ways candidates can put themselves in a position to be connected to career opportunities?
Hannah: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I always like to call myself a professional matchmaker because that is essentially what my job boils down to, right? Finding the right students at the right time for the right opportunities to kind of kick-start their careers. And so, yeah, some ways that candidates can kind of put themselves out there to explore career opportunities is definitely I would say attending events. I know we’re in this kind of weird space right now in the virtual space where in-person events are kind of somewhat a thing of the past or a thing of 2020, 2019. But now, that’s a great opportunity to kind of actually be more places in less amount of time. So, be able to attend career fairs but also attend any sort of events related to affinity groups that you might be associated with or to attend company specific events.
Spotify, ourselves, we host a bunch of events over the fall to educate students about what our offerings are. Attending those events like helps you stand out in the process because it helps us to understand that you really took the time, and you care about the company, and you want to learn more, and you’re eager and excited. So, I really encourage students to really attend as many as they can that makes sense with their schedule. In addition, to doing the traditional things of trying to network especially networking through warm connections such as alumni of their school or people that are affiliated potentially their social circles or whatever that may know somebody at a company, a dream company for them.
So, many people are so focused on the company itself like, ‘I want to get to that destination company,’ and while that is an amazing goal and a great thing to do, I think also think really closely about the function and the job that you want to have. What’s the dream opportunity for you? What’s going to build your skill set in the right way for you to get that opportunity? So, think a little bit broader than necessarily the dream company and try to go after conversations with people and events where you can really learn a little more about specific functions and jobs and what it means to be an employee holding a specific job.
I love what you said about focusing on the dream role rather than a dream company because I think people can get fixated on, ‘I want to work at Spotify,’ but then they realize that maybe they’re only hiring technical roles, and I’m a non-technical person. So, I think focusing on that function first makes complete sense. You said that it’s so important to attend events, and you can attend more events now that they’re virtual, but I think we all deal with virtual event fatigue whether it’s Zoom meetings or just a ton of those virtual webinars. From a recruiter’s perspective, when you see candidates come to a virtual event, what would you say is someone that knocked the event out of the park? Is it networking and being active and asking questions during the event? Is it following up after the event? How do you tackle these events?
Hannah: Yeah, I would say definitely people who are engaged, asking questions, commenting in the commenting box. Just overall contributing instead of kind of passively sitting back and listening. Well, that’s okay too and like lots of recruiters can see who exactly attended the event, and we still appreciate you coming even if you’re more introverted or if you don’t have a question to ask at the time. Definitely, just being engaged in certain ways and trying to network, trying to meet the people that are there, treating the event as not only a window into an opportunity that you might be seeking but also looking at the attendees as people you probably want to network with because you probably share very similar values and very similar career aspirations.
Navigating Virtual Networking Events
Is it an okay practice to follow up with them after the event and try to get some one-on-one time because a lot of those virtual events it’s 10 candidates to one recruiter or 10 candidates to one marketing director?
Hannah: That’s a tough question because I think every company is a little bit different. Every company, their volume is different. In Spotify’s case, we do get quite a bit of volume. In full transparency, it is hard to manage one-on-one conversations and follow-ups after events when we just get so much interest. It doesn’t mean that we don’t want to speak to the candidates and speak to students and engage. It’s just that there are only so many hours in the day. We want to ensure that we are you now able to get people through the actual recruiting process rather than doing a bunch of exploratory conversations. So, I think it’s totally fine to put yourself out there and try to follow up. If you don’t get a response, know that it’s not a personal thing against you or your profile necessarily. It could just be that the recruiting team is a little bit overwhelmed at the time. I think it’s important to keep in mind. But again, Spotify is that unique piece. Other companies might do it a little bit differently. They might have a larger campus recruitment team, or they might have a group of employees that are dedicated just to answering questions from students following up after events. So, yeah, be curious and explore. Every company, again, does it a little differently.
But it seems kind of like from what you were saying and correct me if I’m wrong but when you’re at those events, and you know that there are certain professionals at Spotify, you took the time to be a part of them, make yourself known, raise your hand and ask a question, type your question in the chat because during that time they’re there, they’re present and you don’t know what will happen after whether you want to email them or not. You don’t know if they’re too busy to respond. So, really try to make a name for yourself and maybe stand out during those virtual events.
Hannah: Absolutely! Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
Awesome! Well, I know that you currently have two roles. Not only are you a Senior Campus Recruiter, but you’re also an Early Career Pipeline Program Manager. Can you unpack those two roles and share a little more about what your day-to-day is like?
Hannah: Sure. So, I started off my career at Spotify on the campus recruitment team. We were a really team. Only two people at the time, and we were really building the foundations of the summer internship and the other programs that we have today. Throughout my time for the past five years, I’ve been a University Recruiter, but I’ve now since moved into a role where I’m focused specifically on program management. Since founding the campus recruitment department in 2016, we’ve built more programs than just the summer internship. So, of course, summer internship is our bread and butter and that is our largest global program that we have every single summer. And we now since have more recruiters who support that program and making sure we find the right talent and connect them to the right opportunities.
In my role as a program manager, I oversee a suite of other programs that we’ve now since developed which span from rotational programs. So, we have a finance rotational program. It’s a two-year program that we launched last year, and that’s really to get students who are interested in a career path within finance into our corporate finance function and give them some four rotations through different departments within finance so that they can get a really good foundation and kind of kick-start their career in that space. We have a very similar program to that for our marketing teams. It’s called the Aspiring Marketing Professionals Program. And that program we’ve had since I want to say 2018. So, a couple of years in the running now. We also just launched a Product Management Rotation Program as well. That one is based in Europe. At this point in time, we’re looking to make expansions to the US. So, more to come I hope in 2022 and beyond on that program. And then lastly, we do have a fellowship program that is actually something that I’ve built throughout my time at Spotify. The fellowship program focuses on students who come from non-traditional technical backgrounds. So, those who’ve come from community schools who are self-taught in code, who’ve come from boot camps. We really want to pipeline those individuals because we understand that not everybody goes to a four-year institution or an elite institution within the US or within the world actually because we’ve expanded it to Stockholm in London, but the program has primarily taken place out of New York City. So, that’s an 18-week-long development program where it’s all project based, and we have roughly around eight to twelve students who come in per year per location and become an engineer through that program.
All of those programs, opportunities, fellowships, they sound really incredible, and it makes sense why you’re trying to build the next generation of talent for tomorrow’s industry leaders, which is another line that we grabbed from your LinkedIn profile. So, I’m going to take a step back. I’m going to throw it over to Sam to ask the next round of questions.
HR vs. Recruiter
Sam: It’s so awesome hearing about various programs that you’ve helped build, but before you became a professional matchmaker, you were actually involved in Human Resources also known as HR. I know that a common mistake is to assume that HR is the same as recruiting, a mistake that I’ve made multiple times and I know my peers may have difficulty finding the difference between the two. But I was just wondering what were some of the differences and similarities between the two roles?
Hannah: Yeah. So, I’ve been at a bunch of different companies. I’ve been everywhere from like the finance industry where I was working in an investment bank, and then I also had some time at Bloomberg, which is kind of more like Fintech, if you will. And then I was in the retail industry and I worked at Tiffany & Co., for a little and then eventually pivoted my way to CoreTech and was working at Yahoo for some time and since Spotify. And so, every company kind of structures things a little bit differently, but really like what it boils down to HR versus recruiting. Usually, recruiting sits as a function of the broader HR.
So, when you’re talking to a recruiter, you’re talking more times than not to somebody who sits within the HR organization, but their function is really just to engage, attract pipeline and hire talent and then basically hand them over to those in HR who officially onboard them and then sort of care for them during their entire life cycle as an employee at the company.
So, when you think of HR, some functions that really kind of fall into that are HR generalists, HR specialists HR business partners, compensation and benefits, people who are focused on people analytics. Diversity and inclusion often fall within the HR function. So, those roles are really kind of focused again on like the employee life cycle, and retaining employees, making sure employees are adequately compensated and fairly compensated, that they understand all the policies that they agree to as an employee. Also, a really cool function of HR is employer branding and making sure that employees understand the value proposition of working at the company. So, that is kind of like the core difference I would say. It’s interesting.
To make it a little bit more complicated, I work within a recruiting function, right? Our team, Early Career Pipeline primarily recruits students basically, three quarters of the year, and we do program management for that other quarter of the year. But our team at Spotify actually sits as a part of our diversity and belonging team, which is a part of our equity and impact team, which is a part of HR. So, we actually don’t sit within recruiting even though we have recruiters on our team. So, that all goes back to like the original point that every kind of company does it a little differently across the industry.
Sam: So, you transitioned from HR to recruiting. So, what about recruiting made you want to transition there instead of just focusing on the internal aspects?
Hannah: Yeah. I think for me, the primary thing that I love about working in general with people is the impact on diversity, inclusion and equity. There’s just so much that can be done in that space across the HR space of course but within the recruiting space and more specifically in the early career space because today’s Generation Z is more diverse than any generation we’ve had yet. And so, really getting those students and getting that generation into the workforce and into the right career opportunities is really something I’m passionate about and making sure that there is always representation along the way in those pipelines that we’re building.
Sam: So, you started your career in HR and then transitioned into recruiting. So, do you have any advice for our listeners and audience on choosing their first path in their career? Do you believe there’s such thing as a wrong path? Because I know that’s definitely something that’s on a lot of college students minds in terms of choosing that first path, that first step to take. A lot of it is just deciding whether or not it’s right for them, but do you really believe there’s such thing as a wrong path?
Hannah: Absolutely not! I really think that any job that you take even if you hate it, it’ll be valuable to you because you will understand what you don’t want to do and that will inform your next decisions and where you move and strive for next. So, I think there’s not really a wrong move. Unless you are joining a company that I guess like really doesn’t align with your values personally, maybe there’s political differences or maybe there are issues from like an inclusion and belonging standpoint then I could say, “Okay. Maybe that’s not the right move. But again, you’re still going to learn that it’s not for you, and you’re going to seek out other opportunities because you had that experience. So, the advice I say to people is kind of similar to what I was saying before, think broadly about your career. Don’t just pigeonhole yourself to I want to work at these five top tech companies, or I want to work at these five top investment banks. I mean, it’s great to reach for the stars, but its competitive landscape out there for summer internships. Sometimes it’s just a numbers and probability game depending on where you’re applying to. And if you think about the actual function of the job that you want to do, like I want to gain experience in full stack engineering or product marketing like there are tons of jobs at lots of different companies, but it might not be something that you initially saw right off the bat, but I wouldn’t treat that as necessarily a bad thing because they don’t have the biggest brand recognition at the time.
Startups is such a cool place to be, and I feel like as a new graduate because you get the chance to try a lot of different things and kind of wear a couple different hats. I think one other thing I would say is think about the type of experience you want to have because when I think about what my career journey, when I was trying to choose a path within human resources, I knew that I wanted to join a company where there were some people, I could learn from initially who have had similar job to me. So, more junior level HR folks. And so, when I was going through interview process and looking on LinkedIn to see if other people had similar job titles or had similar job titles at that company, that really helped me to understand, “Okay. There were people that came before me and they’re still at the company,” so that’s a good sign. And if I get this job then I can pick their brain and learn from them.
And then when I think about when I was looking for my job at the time of deciding to leave Yahoo and going to Spotify, I knew that I wanted to be a part of like the foundation of building a team. So, in that case I wasn’t looking for people who had a similar job title. I didn’t want to see anybody at the company who had a similar role to me because I wanted to be the first person in the door for that. So, I think that as a new graduate, you could fall in either bucket, and you don’t necessarily always think about that off the bat but using LinkedIn to research your way into who’s at the company and who you could learn from or if you might be the person to establish the groundwork for a certain role or a certain opportunity is something to think about.
Sam: Yeah, of course. I definitely think it is pretty easy to get bogged down on as you said before these five specific companies and not necessarily thinking about the experience you want to have and what values or mission that they have that aligns with yours. So, thank you so much for the advice, and now I’ll pass it on to AJ.
Spotify Wrapped
Awesome. So, I want to shift gears for a second, Hannah and I want to dive deeper into Spotify. One of the most well-known things about Spotify is their viral marketing campaign called Spotify Wrapped, which I’m sure all of our listeners if you haven’t heard this you probably have heard or seen friends Instagram stories or on LinkedIn or Twitter whatever maybe sharing their top songs or top artists, whatever it may be. And basically, Spotify Wrapped is a chance where listeners receive deep insights into their most memorable listening moments of the year. We actually received our podcast wrapped where we got our podcast analytics, and we saw that for instance we have listeners in over 40 countries which is insane. And thank you guys so much again for the amazing viewership. So, I want to kind of give a fun quick example and ask you, Hannah if there was a jobseekers wrapped and you had access to these analytics, what would you guess jobseekers spend too much time on? And what should they spend more time on?
Hannah: That’s a good question. I think a lot of jobseekers like we kind of discussed like definitely spend a lot of time focusing on the top five companies or the best places to work, which is a great list and you definitely should be looking at that. But probably, that would be what I would think jobseekers probably spend too much time on and maybe cover letters. I definitely think probably, in my opinion, jobseekers need to spend less time on the cover letter and think more outside of the box like portfolio, website or a dynamic piece of work that you can send along with your application just to show us a little bit more about you and what you value.
You can say that in a cover letter but often times at high volume companies, we are not going to be able to read the entire thing. So, having like your portfolio, your website or a piece of work that you can just link to from your resume really helps us out and allows us to just get another side of you.
Would you also throw in a very well-built LinkedIn profile featuring certain posts, a personal website in there, sharing something that you recently created, would you include that in supplementing the cover letter?
Hannah: Yeah, most definitely. So, often like applicant tracking systems at this point will be able to kind of like isolate your LinkedIn, and we can look at it really quickly on the back end when we’re looking at your resume. So, absolutely having a LinkedIn that definitely has up-to-date information, but it’s like succinct and clean and gives us a little bit more than your resume and I think definitely taking advantage of creating engaging posts or engaging on interesting posts, we can see that on your LinkedIn and so that usually tells us, “Okay. You’re moving and shaking in this space,” and we like to see that. So, for sure, that’s a good addition.
Let’s take a quick pause since I wanted to share with you my answer to what jobseekers spend too much time on and that is applying for jobs and never hearing back. The recruiting industry is broken, and it’s getting disrupted by startups like Hirect. On this free app, you can literally build a resume in three minutes and DM recruiters, hiring managers and even founders in seconds. Hirect has helped over 10,000 jobseekers apply and get their dream job efficiently. Stop wasting your time applying for jobs in a black hole and start receiving instant feedback from real company decision makers all on Hirect. Now, back to the show.
So, can you be more specific? You said moving and shaking in the space, is it interacting with people at Spotify? Is it interacting with people in the music space? Is it posting about recent acquisitions in the music space like what do you mean by moving and shaking in this space?
Hannah: It doesn’t necessarily have to be specific to the industry like for Spotify, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that you’re writing about like undiscovered artists that you might be representing or that you’re commenting on a merger and acquisition in the space because that’s great and like that does show aptitude for like interest in the music space and also just like aptitude of knowledge of what’s kind of going on, which is great. If the role that you’re applying for is really related to the content space then definitely I think if we’re looking at your LinkedIn, it would be great to see some engagement on posts like that. But if you’re applying to Spotify to be a financial analyst or to be a web engineer, it’s really fine if we see content on your page that’s just like engaging in that specific job function. Like you’re talking about how you learn this new web technology, and you’re really excited about it, and you put it on your portfolio, or you saw like a really interesting merger in the finance space and this is how you think it’s going to impact like investment banking, or you know what I mean? Those are just some examples of things. We love to see whatever you’re thinking about in terms of the job function as well as the industry.
Yeah. It was interesting that you said that I’ve never heard LinkedIn kind of go hand in hand with the ATS for the Applicant Tracking System. It’s usually resume and ATS, but you said that the LinkedIn profile will still get pulled by the ATS or can you explain that more?
Hannah: I can’t speak for every applicant tracking system out there because we only use one, but oftentimes what I’ve seen at least the direction in a lot of these products is that when you’re filling out the application, we’re asking you to upload your resume and oftentimes, these applicant tracking systems can separate out any hyperlinks they might see on your resume and bucket it into a certain area on the back end for us to see, or it’s an application field that you’re able to put in your URL to your LinkedIn page, and then it would isolate on the back end to the appropriate place for our eyes to see alongside your resume. So, yeah, often times, know when you’re applying that if you do put your LinkedIn on your resume or into the job application, it could be definitely looked at.
Sam: So, even as a college student, I know that one of the most common questions for companies to ask candidates is why they want to work at the company. So, when answering why Spotify interview question, do you think that a solid response is to talk about your usage or love of the Spotify platform?
Answering “Why Spotify?”
Hannah: Yeah, I love this question because I think a lot of people default to just talking about their usage on the platform, which is great. But I think honestly at this point, I’ll be honest, we kind of assume you are a Spotify subscriber if you’re applying and that you use the platform in some way. I think it’s kind of just a given at this point just because we have so many users now. So, I would encourage students to really go a little deeper with that, really do the research. We have so much stuff out there on our Life at Spotify, Instagram, Twitter as well as lifeatspotify.com, which is not only our job site, but it’s a whole host of blog posts and information about our hiring process. So, take advantage of those resources that are out there.
We also have an engineering blog. We have a design blog. Just google Spotify design blog, Spotify engineering blog. We have a research blog. We have an open-source platform. We have so many things out there beyond just spotify.com and just ingest our job site for you to kind of dig your teeth into and really just find out more information about what employees are doing at the company. So, I say have at it, do the research, really think about the values that you see in all of the articles and on the website. We have our five core values, of course, but I think that there’s more to it that you’ll just kind of pickup from all the content that’s out there. Anchor that to like those values to your response to why you’re interested in the company and what really excites you about an opportunity to be at the company beyond just like, “Oh, I would just love to work for a product that I use every day.” I think we all want that, right? So, just being a little more specific is always really helpful, and it really helps people stand out.
I love what you said, Hannah when you’re answering Sam’s question about like it’s almost if you say that I’m a Spotify subscriber, it’s a given. Right? And it’s just not enough because you get thousands upon thousands of applicants and it’s so competitive and there’s such few open roles for not that many positions. It has to be deeper research. And I know that for Sam and myself and our team when we were preparing for this episode, we were doing a ton of research on Spotify. We saw that there were programs to support underground Indie artists and there was M&A activity in the podcasting side of things and there were exclusivity agreements going on. It doesn’t really matter if you’re going to be in one side of the company or not, but to talk about what’s going on and talking about how you want to be at a company that is in the forefront and leading the podcasting space, or you want to be supporting smaller artists whatever it may be, it needs to be something a little more than the next person. That’s how I was able to navigate recruiting and I always tried to think, what could I do a little more than the next person? And I know that person is probably just going to say I like Spotify. So, how could I go a little bit deeper and really knock the shoes off of the interviewer and blow them away with a fact or a research point that I saw? So, I love what you said that going a little bit deeper really does matter from a recruiter’s perspective. On the next topic of resumes and I think that everyone has seen this recent viral news story where there was essentially someone who posted about a really unique and creative resume that matched the user interface of the Spotify platform. It’s funny because the normal train of thought is to stay very black and white to have a one-page resume to follow the normal format, no color, no extra bells and whistles. But not only the post blew up on LinkedIn, they received praise by the Spotify CEO, but they actually were ultimately given the job offer and I think it was a marketing role at Spotify. So, I just wanted to ask you is this case an anomaly or should candidates have a uniquely formatted resume and get creative in this process?
Unique Resume Formats
Hannah: Yeah, it’s a great question. That intern ended up joining a product management internship. That was like the dream internship for her, and it was great that we were able to make it happen. My opinion is I wouldn’t spend hundreds of hours really trying to make the most pixel perfect resume that has the colors and the formatting if you already have the black and white version, and it works, and it looks good. If you want to go on that creative process and that journey, we will welcome it. We will of course consider you, and we’ll consider the effort that you put in to go a little beyond the black and white, but I don’t want to discount the black and white because I personally still love that version and I still think that that is the easiest version for us to read. It’s not distracting. And so, that is to say we’re still paying attention to the black and whites, and we’re not scrolling past those and we’re still looking at the content that you put on there and really like how you’re putting it all together and what the bullet points say and what you’ve done. So, I think again, just to reiterate totally fine to show us your creative side, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the resume format. As I said, if you have a personal website or you want to share like an Instagram account that you think might be really relevant to the job or to Spotify and could add value like share that with us, put that on your resume, link to that, give us a QR code like anything that’s really on your resume that is a little unique and different that you want us to link out to, we will likely go there and take a look and evaluate as an additional supplement to your resume. So, that’s one thing I will say.
Also, I know that there are applicant tracking systems out there. Spotify doesn’t really work like this, but there are like resume parsers and stuff out there. So, I would be cognizant of that if you do have a uniquely formatted resume, it might get messed up on the back end and if it’s kind of like this blurred image then that’s kind of unfortunate because then the recruiter can’t read it. So, I would say if you had both versions, it’s always safe to just like upload it if you did go down that journey of making a uniquely formatted resume.
And if the person has a normal black and white resume, but they add let’s say a QR code to an Instagram account or a link to maybe they have a fun Spotify playlist where it’s all underground artists or whatever it may be, do recruiters or at least for yourself, do you actually spend the time to look at those additional resources? Because I heard that recruiters spend about like six to ten seconds per resume. So, it’s very quick. I guess A, is that true? And B, do you spend the additional time looking at those other resources?
Hannah: Yeah, we do. I mean, at Spotify we’ve kind of taken the policy that if you’re willing to put that on your resume, it should be worth looking at. So, we will take the extra couple of minutes to just scroll through and see what we see. There are certain roles at Spotify that require a portfolio like our design internships. And so, of course, we’re definitely looking then and kind of looking honestly less at the resume itself. We kind of check that box and make sure you’re at the right school year and stuff like that but then looking at the portfolio more heavily. And then there are some roles within Spotify too that are more on the creative and beyond product design such as artists and label partnerships or editorial, editorial being one that is definitely where we want to see like what your tastes are. So, giving us a link to your Spotify and stuff like that could be very beneficial even if it isn’t specifically required in the job description. So, I would encourage people to really think about the role that they’re applying to and if they had something creative, and it could really add value to their application have at it and send it to us because we’ll often be looking at it.
Sam: Definitely. And as an avid musician myself including playing the violin and teaching piano for 10 years, it’s always been a huge part of my life. I know that my ideal work life would be the intersection between my passion and purpose. So, at Spotify, have you noticed that many employees at Spotify are involved with music in some way whether they are a musician or produced their own music?
Hannah: Yeah, 100%. I would say everybody at Spotify has at least some musical talent or some unique talent. Every quarter, we have like a band night. We have a musician’s club at Spotify where musicians get together, and they form fans, and then they perform at like a band night that happens in some of our office hubs, and they’re really talented. They are really, really good. You have that outlet to do that. We have other outlets where you’re able to perform and play music as well, and we have lots of Slack channels that are people nerving out over certain music, or people nerving out over podcasts. Podcast recommendations is like such a populated Slack channel that we have. We have a concert ticket Slack channel. Actually, when we were more in person, we had a unique benefit where the company would purchase tickets to music festivals and concerts and stuff and employees would get the chance to go and go together as a group and get to meet one another and bond over music and see live shows together. So, yeah, that’s definitely an element. It’s not required. You do not have to be a very accomplished musician to get a job at Spotify but people just kind of come in the door having that passion because of the unique nature of our business and so a lot of people bond over that and get to showcase that when they’re at the company.
The Final Question
Well, I think the beauty of being on this is fantastic, or hopefully you think fantastic podcast is you can share the link to all of your friends at Spotify. And it’s so cool to see that there are a lot of passionate people both in the music space and in the podcast space at Spotify. As much fun as Sam and I have been having interviewing you today, Hannah on the show, unfortunately the song is coming to an end. And we have one final question one question that we ask all of our guests to end the show, and what is the best piece of advice that you can share with our audience to help them get past the final run interview and land the dream job?
Hannah: I think honestly it might sound very simple, it might be something that said many times before but authenticity and being your genuine self is honestly the way to go, showing who you are, showing up as you are, know that companies like Spotify like we really, really appreciate people for their uniqueness and their diversity and all aspects of them that kind of experience wise make them who they are. So, keep that in mind, I think that that can get kind of lost in the interview process. I got to be this way. I got to hit these specific answers and do it in this specific format and come super, super prepared. And while that’s all true, I guess, we’re all human. And we want to make sure that that is still an element in the interview process because you’re going to be joining a team and that’s kind of a big deal in a way. You’re going to be kind of taking your next steps in your career, and it needs to be a fit on both ends, and it needs to be a place where you feel like you can add value, and you can make an impact and that you can be your best self and be your authentic self. So, keep that in mind when you’re in that process and just take a deep breath and be yourself because that’s the way that you’re going to show up and be unique. So, yeah, that’s what I would say.
Outro
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Hannah for being on the Final Round. Sam, thank you so much for joining us and co-hosting this episode with me. It was an absolute blast to have everyone on today. And Hannah, hopefully we can have you back on in the near future.
Hannah: That’d be great. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been awesome chatting with you both.
That was such a fun episode especially with special co-host Sam Kao. Now, I understand why people call Hannah a professional matchmaker since she is so knowledgeable about recruiting and early career programs. And if you are listening on Spotify or really any other platform, make sure you smash that subscribe button. Until the next episode of the Final Round podcast, keep fighting and I will see you in the ring.
