Got an invitation for a recruiter call. The call was very positive and the recruiter said I would likely be moved to the final stage as I have a internal recommendation from the team. The recruiter also said that she will get back to me within the same week to schedule the next round. The reality at Spotify is a bit different though: there was radio silence for almost 4 weeks and I did not receive any further feedback. I then got a mail that they are sorry for the slow process as the team was on vacation. They promised to move forward with the application process very soon. After two more weeks of silence I got a response that I won’t advance to the next round and they already hired someone else. After speaking with peers I found this was a common pattern with Spotify. The application process is very slow and unreliable. I won’t consider applying again.

Unprofessional, extremely disrespectful interview process. I applied to the research scientist position in the Human-Computer Interaction team. The process started in May, and after two 45min technical screens I was asked to do 7 more interviews, including a research talk. The recruiters were unresponsive for a couple of weeks until I emailed the hiring manager, who pressed the recruiter to schedule the interviews. During the whole process, the recruiters were atrocious. The technical interviews were great. I was presented with research problems they are actually trying to solve and we brainstormed solutions together. They are all very smart and nice. I was left with a great impression of the team. Then after these 9 interviews they ghosted me. Yes, after more than 3 months of emails, interviews, and lots of preparation, they could not bother to send an email informing I wasn't selected. I first tried to follow up with the recruiter to no avail. Then I emailed the hiring manager, who seems like a decent person, and to my surprise they never replied. I was shocked as I never heard of this happening in our research community. Absolutely demoralizing.