Building a bigger team

Growing the monetization team at Spotify

“Hear us out.”

Short preview of the full video created to help hiring for the monetization team.

Hiring for the monetization team at Spotify was a top priority. To attract talent, we wanted to create a video to share what it's like to work with us.

My role for this project

Design director

 

We had an optimistic goal of doubling the size of our team at Spotify. With already more than a 100 team members, we had an ambitious goal of hiring for the monetization team.

As the design director of the monetization team, I aligned with the product, engineering and HR leads to create a brief that would best represent our values. I lead interviews, brainstorms and created mood boards to find ways to attract the best talent to our offices in New York city.

I worked with Ring Toll to produce a video that would be used to hire new people by presenting our team, our mission and Spotify as a company.

Tone

Personal
Warm
Honest

Themes

Team mission
Ad products
Diversity
New York City

Visuals

Interviews
Personal stories
Day-in-life scenes
Team interactions

Mood board

We wanted to portray the honest working style of our team. Focusing on collaboration, diversity and productivity. To showcase our environment and our personalities.

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Final produced video

We wanted to share the stories of 3 members of the team and follow them throughout the day. Showing glimpses of how they interact with New York city and the balance they have with working for Spotify. Throughout the video we also show glimpses of the incredible and diverse team that make up the monetization team.

The theme "hear us out" was used throughout because it's been notoriously difficult to hire for the monetization team. With this video, we were able to show that even at Spotify, the monetization team had an amazing capability to create exciting products.

The video was produced in Q3 of 2017 and was used by the recruiting team as they reached out to potential candidates.

Hiring results

240+

team members by 2018

Through the massive combined efforts of the entire team, we were successful in doubling the talent in the monetization organization.

Made with love

Some notes! I really opted to remove myself as one of the people that the team followed around for the personal stories section of the video. However, the person we intended to follow backed out at the last minute and the team decided that I was the best person to replace them. While I reluctantly agreed, I'm glad they were able to capture my interactions mainly because it warms my heart watching myself as a part of the team. (Also another note, I don't get into work at noon and play games.)

The CREAM team (bad name, I know) was the first team I joined when I started at Spotify in 2013. We were a team of 6 that was focused on building the best ad experience for a new listening platform. I have made lifelong friends from my time with the team and worked along side the most talented people. This was one of my last projects with the team before I moved on to a new effort at Spotify. Thank you for checking it out.

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Selected works

Spotify for PodcastersProduct Vision & Design

Spotify GamingTeam organization / Branding

Mobile podcastersIllustration

Copyright 2023 Samwoo E

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