Interview process started with a standard phone screen with a recruiter, followed by a 30 min conversation with the hiring manager. After positive feedback, I progressed to a take home assignment. The assignment was a straightforward quantitative assessment with typical market research data. We were instructed to answer some questions based on the data - all in all pretty easy.
After submitting the assignment, the recruiter told me I would hear back by end of week. A few days later, I got a note back from the recruiter letting me know that I would not be moving on to the next stage and that they could not provide any additional information or feedback as to why.
I’m never one to let a rejection get to me. That’s part of the job search process, and you just have to brush yourself off and move on. However, the fact that I had spent around 4 hours on the assignment to not even receive a one sentence explanation about why I would not be moving on (at this stage in the process) is something I find problematic.
I know I didn’t mess up the assignment (I’m not kidding when I say it was very straightforward), and there were no concerns raised about my experience before I moved on to the assignment stage. So to not receive a simple “we were looking for someone with more ____ experience” or “we were looking for you to pull out _____ insight from the data” was frustrating.
My advice to Spotify? Treat your potential hires like humans and give them the respect they deserve if they take the time to do your assignments.