Interns & The Business: Mutual Beneficiaries
At Spotify, our early career programming is designed to be affirmative for emerging talent, as well as contributing to reaching our business goals on a global scale. And this year we’ve been even more dedicated to the return on investment in each program, both from the student’s and Spotify’s perspective.
Internships create a space for students to gain practical experience, be exposed to subject matter experts in students’ fields of interest, and develop industry-specific skills. They are such an important tool for building a network and kick-starting a career. And just as important as they are for so many students around the world, they’re equally important to us.
What Do Interns Bring To Our Business?
Our internships help us to identify and nurture potential future employees, and we find that interns often bring new ideas, perspectives, and approaches to our work. Our interns’ fresh insights contribute to innovation and help us stay competitive.
Diversity is also fostered through our internships by attracting candidates from different backgrounds, cultures, universities and organizations. Additionally, the positive experiences of students participating in our internship program has enhanced our reputation as an employer of choice and improved our brand image. Not only have we received accolades and won awards, interns consistently have positive experiences with us and consequently are eager to share their story and recommend Spotify to others.
What Happens During A Spotify Summer Internship?
Spotify’s Global Summer Internship Program remains the flagship initiative of our Early Career offerings. This year, we offered each intern a 10-13 week hybrid role from June through September in one of multiple offices across Europe, the US, and Asia.
Offering a hybrid experience, provides us access to a broader pool of talent and reach into areas we likely would not have been able to hire from. As a result, we welcomed 161 interns from around the world with over 50% identifying as female globally and 60% of those in the US identifying as being part of an underrepresented group.
The exact program for each person varies as they are fully embedded into the work their teams are doing and they make significant contributions to the business overall. Our interns work on projects such as generative AI for copywriting and ads, audience insights, driving user engagement, media plans and so much more.
Introducing Interns To Our Culture
Beyond their day-to-day work, our interns are offered a host of activities that provide them with opportunities to network with their intern peers from different teams and countries. This was especially important as we were running a hybrid program with interns based all over the globe.
We also acknowledge that we just wouldn’t be Spotify if we didn’t incorporate one of our most enjoyable values: being playful, into our internship program! That’s why as well as biweekly virtual fikas (a staple coffee break in Swedish culture), we ran a specific program of fun and interactive activities solely for our intern class, and everyone was invited to join our annual celebration: SpotiFEST.
In addition, this summer we presented a new offering and paired interns with current GenZ Spotifiers for mentorship. Interns found it valuable to obtain coaching and guidance from those who were recently in their shoes and created a successful career path for themselves. Additionally, our GenZ Spotifiers enjoyed mentoring and interacting with our interns, fostering a sense of engagement and satisfaction while being offered a leadership and development opportunity.
Furthermore, we curated a summer speaker series exclusively for our interns to broaden their perspectives and help them learn from experienced professionals. They heard from various leaders across Spotify all while having the opportunity to directly ask them real-time questions.
And finally, towards the end of the Summer internship, we will host virtual demo days to give interns an opportunity to showcase all of their hard work done over the summer. While interns are afforded the opportunity to present their accomplishments, they learn more about the company through viewing their fellow interns’ presentations as well.
These activities help interns build connections and establish relationships with their intern peers and fellow Spotifiers. And more importantly, they help foster a sense of community and make the interns feel more comfortable and have the best experience with Spotify.
Closing Out The Summer Internship
At the start of our internship planning process, we set out to give the best experience and a memorable summer internship, as well as to convert a portion of them into full time employees. We did just that. Additionally, upon surveying our interns and hiring managers, we found that both groups were overwhelmingly satisfied with their experience and the quality of the internship program.
As we begin to close out the internship program for this Summer, as always, we will take time to reflect on the past few months and identify areas of opportunity to evolve and enhance our offering for the summer ahead.
There’s one more thing left to do before we get to that evaluation stage – and that’s to say a massive and heartfelt thank you to all our hiring managers, GenZ mentors, Summer speakers, the People team, and most importantly, to all of our interns, including those who are now starting and growing their careers with Spotify.
