I interviewed for a senior user researcher role for their experience team. The position was located out of their Stockholm office back in 2022.
I went through a recruiter screening following by a second round interview by the hiring manager.
The hiring manager came from an extremely UX oriented background, heavy in usability. We talked about my skillset in mixed methods research, which was relatively new to the tech industry at the time. I had come with vastand deep experience working both deeply with qual and quant but this seemed to not interest the hiring manager. We talked about how my skills could help product decision making at the strategic level, to help product direction- but this was not that role. I felt that research could do more than be a support function and really thought Spotify user research would have greatly benefited from growing the direction of research beyond usability.
Ultimately, the manager was heavily in the camp of design research on a qualitative level. They were confused about how to combine qualitative and quantitative research and saw no value in mixed methodolgy. The hiring manager believed their way of working was the direction they wanted to continue in, it was a cordial conversation and I felt they were very polite about it.