How My GitHub Profile Landed Me a Job at Spotify

This is the experience of how my GitHub profile got me a job at Spotify. The key was my GitHub profile and the various repos I had worked on the years before. This post will be personal, and the key takeaway is the importance of a portfolio. It doesn't have to be a good portfolio (mine certainly wasn't). But having a portfolio can be the difference between getting the job or not.

Spotify Interview

Before Spotify, I worked as a software engineer at a different company. It was my first job after university and it was all right. I learned how software was being developed professionally which was fun and interesting. One day, I get an e-mail from Spotify and they were asking for applications for 3-month internships. I immediately sent them my CV.

A couple of days later I receive a phone call and I get called for an interview. The day of the interview is approaching and I'm starting to feel sick 😨. On the day of the interview, I had a fever, but I took some medicine and went there anyway. The interview did not go well. We talked and did some coding exercises on the board. I completely blacked out (partially because of the medicine). The last thing I said was "Please, check out my GitHub profile" and they said they would.

After the interview, I was so disappointed in myself 😔. I returned home to my job, which now seemed boring and bleak.

The Call Back

A few days pass and I get a phone call. It was the recruiter! He said they liked me and would like to offer me the internship! Wow, what a feeling! 😃 I accepted, and a few weeks later I quit my current job. My friends and colleagues were surprised I would quit my full-time job for a 3-month internship, but I didn't care. My two greatest passions in life are technology and music, and I was going to be working with both! 💻🎸

Internship Ends

The deal with the internship was, that if they liked me they would offer me a permanent job. The date when my internship was ending was quickly approaching. I was nervous, but I had learned so much and met a lot of people from different parts of the world so I was happy either way. We had a meeting and they said they would like to offer me a permanent job. Again, bliss! I felt such a relief and of course, excitement!

My GitHub Profile

Later, I was talking to someone in my team about my interview. I told her how bad it went, and how surprised I was to still get the offer. She told me something like "Yeah, they told me it went bad. But when we looked at your GitHub profile we saw that you actually can code. And that's why we wanted you".

My profile did not contain a lot; some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript websites I had built for fun and to learn. Before the interview, I looked through the code to make sure it looked nice and tidy.

Conclusion

I got an internship that later led to a permanent job at Spotify, thanks to my GitHub profile. I realized how crucial having a portfolio is. It doesn't have to be the best, just something to show what you can do. This was 6 years ago. I still work at Spotify, now as a Senior Software Engineer. It turned out to be an amazing place to work so I haven't found a good reason to leave.

If I can do it, you can too!! 👊 Thanks for reading.

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