I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at Spotify (Stockholm, Stockholm) in Sep 2017
Interview
Recruiter reached out over LinkedIn to gauge interest in a few open roles. From the initial email exchanged we set up a call to talk about my background and the role/Spotify. Was moved on to 2 Google hangout interviews each about 2 weeks apart. I then was invited to schedule an on-site in the Stockholm office about 2-3 weeks later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
First Interviews were very basic. Questions about my experiences, my current role, asked questions on collaborations and PM skills. Standard questions. No surprises here.
Final round was broken down into four parts: 1) Tech&Design 2) Execution&Scaling 3) Leadership&Culture 4) Strategy,Vision&Instinct
The questions are specific and related to the theme noted above. 1) Tell me about how you work with design. What does that collaboration look like. Take me through a specific project. Technical portion was a basic PM tech interview. How do you work with devs. What does your team set up look like. Some basic question about what I think Tech Debt are and how I see that fitting into PM roadmap/priorities. What is continuous integration mean? What is spaghetti code?
Overall they want you to be passionate and know your product inside and out and be able to clearly communicate.
3 rounds. Phone screen with recruiter, convo with hiring manager, final round was 3 additional conversations with the team. Questions centered on previous experience, working with data, product strategy, etc.
It was good, for the period while it lasted. The main kicker though, was that they closed the role right in the middle of my interview process without communicating why.
Structured and professional. Assessments were tough but fair, making sure you could translate needs into features which drive product roadmaps and established milestones to measure against. Recruiters were flighty and like any big company they rely on their brand to have you want them
Product Manager applicants have rated the interview process at Spotify with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 60% positive. To compare, the company-average is 47.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Product Manager roles take an average of 57 days to get hired, when considering 35 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Spotify overall takes an average of 39 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Spotify as a Product Manager according to 35 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 34%
One on one interview: 28%
Skills test: 14%
Group panel interview: 7%
Personality test: 7%
Presentation: 5%
IQ intelligence test: 3%
Other: 2%
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