New Media Industry Jobs for Business School Grads
The reputation of the traditional MBA career path is they either move into a major financial firm or become consultants. While this stereotype belies the diversity of MBA careers, to outsiders the available options can seem quite limited, especially if the graduate in question is interested in more creative pursuits.
This week’s newest jobs are for the folks who want to apply their business skills to creative ends. The four new media industry give a broad view what companies need from b-school grads, offering positions at digital powerhouses and traditional recording studios. If you have always prized your knowledge of television or music, these might be options for you.
Top MBA Recruiters: Spotify
Spotify, arguably the reigning champion of streaming audio content, shared a triumphant Q4 report with its shareholders late last year: “For the first time in company history, operating income, net income, and free cash flow were all positive.”
Ten years in, Spotify’s business model—a combination of premium paid access and “freemium” ad-based access—miraculously legitimized the Napster template to the tune of enormous profits. To make matters complicated, the Swedish company’s resounding success has been a major source of controversy among musicians whose life’s work the platform is built on.
When Spotify shared its year-end round-up metrics late last year, one image made the social media rounds that compared the company’s annual revenue of $1.37 billion to the 1,117,021 streams required for an artist to make minimum wage and a $0.0037 average per-stream royalty.
One might now understand why many high-profile musicians, like Prince, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Neil Young, initially refused to stream their music on Spotify. The composer and harpist Joanna Newsom disparaged Spotify in a 2015 LA Times interview as a “villainous cabal of major labels … built from the ground up as a way to circumvent the idea of paying their artists.”
But the platform’s growing power and presence have coerced musicians to play ball, even if they are reluctant to do so. Whether Spotify’s overall operating structure and approach to content distribution is viable for the long-term remains to be seen.
For MBAs looking for a way to help musicians from inside the belly of the beast, let’s take a look at employment at Spotify.
Landing a Spotify Job
Known for its constant intake of employees, Spotify maintains several divisions and publishes both job openings and internship opportunities. Employees report that internal referrals, stand-out experience and direct engagement are the best way to get hired.
Spotify’s HR team reports receiving hundreds of thousands of resumes each year. So, an early career MBA’s best bet at landing a permanent position may be to secure an internship. Seasoned business leaders would do well to draw the attention of Spotify’s Acquisition Team.
Spotify Job Salaries
According to Paysa, a comprehensive salary comparison tool, those in product management roles at Spotify can expect to earn salaries that average more than $190,000 per year. Even the rough average salary for the company, regardless of position, is about $125,000 per year (below).
What a Spotify Internship Looks Like
Internships are offered in various academic formats alongside occasional graduate and training opportunities. As an intern, Spotify claims, “You’ll be right at the heart of major projects, working with teams of passionate people to create the next awesome thing.”
Spotify places interns at its office locations around the world. These positions tend to be highly competitive so it may take some creative maneuvering to get your foot and nail the interview.
Former intern Andrea Tiutan explains, “I knew that researching and understanding my future hiring managers would help me cater my answers to their interview questions to what they wanted to hear. All this would also help me know how to present my market research project in the most compelling way.”
Spotify Recruitment
In a 2017 blog post, Spotify’s Talent Acquisition team head, Fredrik Johnsson, explains how Spotify recruiters are evaluated based on finding successful matches to the company’s needs, rather than the traditional metric of number-of-hires:
“I focus on letting my managers evaluate the behaviors I need in my team. I need courageous team players, people who act as true talent acquisition partners to the organization and who I can trust to take the hiring decisions that are right for the company in the long run.”
If Johnsson’s approach rings true, experienced MBAs would be wise to clearly frame how their own expertise and leadership aligns with Spotify’s specific needs.
In terms of how to get in front of recruiters, Johnsson explained in a 2018 post that his team team uses LinkedIn’s Talent Insights as a search tool.
Choosing Spotify
Spotify is known for its decentralized leadership structure and consensus-oriented decision-making. Some employees report that this, in combination with suboptimal HR practices and ineffective middle management, makes both the impact of their work and opportunity for advancement a challenging prospect.
On the other hand, some employees report that they appreciate the community of peers, benefits, and work-life balance the company offers. With Spotify’s recent announcement that it plans to further expand both its operations and market reach, now may be an optimal time to grab a seat at the table. That is, of course, for those willing to take on both the good and the bad with one of the world’s highest-profile businesses.
A Breakdown of LinkedIn’s Top U.S. Companies for 2019
If you’re in the midst of your MBA studies, there’s a good chance that you’ve already started a career that you love, or that you’re seeking a transition into a new industry. Perhaps you’re still in the exploratory stage with regard to future jobs and other post graduate options. Either way, it’s helpful to set your sights high as you make your next move.
LinkedIn recently published its list of 2019’s Top Companies based upon user data. Authors asked which companies were attracting the most attention from job seekers, and which ones retained the most satisfied employees after hiring in order to compile the list. To make it useful to our readers, we’ve broken down the list into the top five in three categories: tech, finance, and entertainment.
Technology Companies
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, YouTube, and Nest, among others, tops the list of the most desirable firms on LinkedIn’s list. With 98,800 employees worldwide, Alphabet is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, and has offices in New York City and Seattle. According to LinkedIn’s data, Project and Program Management, and IT positions have the highest number of new hires. With Google’s current investment of $13 billion for expansion in the U.S, it is a great time for MBAs to explore possibilities at Alphabet.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, plans on expanding across half of the U.S. by the end of the year.
Current open positions include a Project Managment Summer Internship in Mountainview with Loon, an Alphabet subsidiary; and a Summer internship at Google’s Reston, VA office with one of several teams including finance, strategy, product management, and operations.
Facebook, the parent of What’s App, Oculus VR, and of course, Instagram, was ranked second overall on the LinkedIn ranking. Like Alphabet, Facebook employs the most new hires in its project/program management and IT departments. Facebook has 36,000 global employees and is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, and its top hiring locations are Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco.
Facebook is now hiring a Consumer Marketing Manager for Messenger, a Marketing Manager for Data & Privacy, a Finance and Business Operations Manager within its Global Marketing Solutions department, among other positions.
San Francisco based cloud software company Salesforce, with 22,000 employees across the U.S., is another of the top companies for tech-related careers according to LinkedIn. With a large number of new hires in engineering, business development, and sales positions, Salesforce is a wise target for MBAs. Current open positions include a Platform Engineering Product Manager in both the Dallas, TX and Indianapolis, IN offices; and an Analytics Lead for Strategy & Growth in the San Francisco office. All three of these positions encourage recent MBA grads to apply.
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Outside the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco, located in the downtown South of Market district. The company was ranked fourth overall on the annual LinkedIn list.
With available positions for Senior Managers in New York City, Annapolis, MD and Durham, NC, along with Finance and Business Strategy positions in Culver City and the Cupertino headquarters, Apple is another top destination for job seekers on LinkedIn. New hires most often land in IT, Engineering and Sales Positions. Its ever expanding campuses are set to hire 20,000 people by 2025, and a brand new, $1billion campus is planned for Austin, TX.
Oracle, ranked ninth overall on the LinkedIn list, employs 137,000 global employees, and also hires many of its new employees in IT, sales, and engineering. With a reputation for hiring a large number of new grads, Oracle takes great pride in a culture of camaraderie. In a recent LinkedIn article on the topic, Kim Levin, Oracle’s senior organization and talent development consultant, says, “We understand how important it is to have that first, successful onboarding.” Its robust recruitment program hires from a number of large universities like Ohio State and Penn State, along with private colleges and universities.
Recruits are sent to one of Oracle’s hubs in Austin, TX; Reston, VA; Burlington, MA, or Santa Monica, CA, where they can connect with fellow recruits and become acclimated to their jobs. The company is currently hiring an Innovation Program Strategist in Philadelphia, as as well as for a Financial Analyst position in Reston, VA, and Cloud Sales positions in Chicago and Atlanta.
Entertainment Companies
Amazon, third on LinkedIn’s list, employs 250,000 people in the U.S. alone. As parent company to Whole Foods, Zappos, and Audible, along with its thriving media and entertainment brand, Amazon has a multitude of job opportunities for MBAs. Operations, Engineering and Sales are among the top departments for new hires, and the company is also seeking to fill positions for a Senior Product Manager for Technical Products, as well as Program and Project Manager positions in Seattle.
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Despite major expansion, Amazon, ranked as the second best company in the U.S. by LinkedIn, the tech giant still calls Seattle home, with plenty of openings for MBA talent.
The 11th ranked Netflix, with 5,700 employees in the U.S., continues to expand its workforce in an effort to remain competitive amidst the growing crowd of streaming content providers. According to a recent Quartz article, Netflix wants to be perceived “less as a subscription-driven technology business and more like a movie studio or TV network’, which is good news for MBAs seeking an entertainment focused career. Netflix is currently hiring in content marketing management, product management, and finance, ad well as in multiple other roles at their Los Angeles offices.
Although it was originally founded outside the U.S., music streaming giant Spotify ranked 14th overall on the annual LinkedIn list, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and New York. Spotify is hiring Business Development Analysts, Project Managers, and Production Managers and various other positions nationwide.
Comcast NBCUniversal continues to rule the media landscape in the U.S. with 184,000 employees. The company’s top hiring cities are New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, where its new Technology Center recently became one of the city’s largest employers. Comcast is currently seeking a VP for eCommerce and a Financial Operations Auditor in Philadelphia, along with MBA Summer interns in its Santa Monica, CA location.
The massive Comcast Center in Philadelphia tops the city skyline, with the two biggest buildings in the United States outside of New York or Chicago. The major media company ranks 15th overall on the LinkedIn top company list.
Disney, the parent company to ESPN, Pixar, and ABC, has over 200,000 employees globally. It hires the most new employees in operations, media & communications, and business development. The company supports education for its staff at all levels—it will cover the price of school for both full and part-time employees. Disney’s top hiring U.S. locations are Orlando, Los Angeles, and New York. Current available positions are a Digital Pricing Manager in New York, a Senior Financial Analyst in Orlando, and a Finance Manager in LA.
Finance Companies
One of Deloitte‘s most appealing facets is its encouragement of entrepreneurship—Startup Deloitte challenges employees to pitch ideas for startups to be funded by the company. With a workforce in the U.S. of close to 85,000, Deloitte brings in the most new hires in consulting, business development, and accounting roles, and its locations in Washington DC, New York City and Chicago are the most desirable according to LinkedIn.dds Margot Thom, Deloitte Global’s Chief Talent Officer, says, “As an organization, Deloitte is dedicated to creating an experience that allows its people to thrive and grow.”
With nearly 85,000 employees, Deloitte is the top-ranked finance company on the LinkedIn Top Employer list at fifth overall.
Deloitte is currently hiring for numerous positions, including Accounting and Reporting Manager in Philadelphia, Strategy and Operations Associates in New York and Chicago.
If you’re hoping to work with Bank of America, ranked 18th overall, it’s good to know that they currently acquire the most new talent in finance, sales, and support roles. New York, Dallas-Fort Worth, TX and Charlotte, NC are its leading locations. Globally, Bank of America employs 200,000 people.
Available job openings include an Executive for InterAffiliate Services and a Product Services Consultant in Charlotte, along with a Senior Relationship Manager position in Boston.
Goldman Sachs, 21st overall, hires the most new people in IT, business development, and finance, and has a worldwide headcount of 36,600. It has recently implemented higher standards for diversity, pledging to grow its numbers of female and non-white employees. Dallas-Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, and New York City are its most-searched locations, according to LinkedIn. Goldman Sachs is hiring in New York City for Associates and Analysts, and also for Operations and Associate positions in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Citi, 22nd overall, has a high numbers of new hires in business development, finance, and leading offices in New York, Dallas, and Tampa, where they are all currently hiring for analyst positions. Citi employees 66,000 people in the U.S., and each of these offices is currently hiring analysts, among other positions.
Like Goldman Sachs, Citi has stated its commitment to increasing diversity—the company has pledged to expanding the numbers of women in its highest ranks, from VP to Managing Director, to 40 percent by 2021.
Managing a Personal Crisis, and More – Boston News
What’s going on in Boston this week?
How to Manage an Employee Who’s Having a Personal Crisis – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business Review recently explored how managers can best support employees to “take care of themselves emotionally while also making sure they are doing their work.”
Annie McKee, author of How to Be Happy at Work and a senior fellow at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, offers three helpful suggestions:
- Set a tone of compassion in the office. It will not only give your employees confidence to approach you with struggles, but also give you the ability to spot warnings signs.
- Be creative with solutions. A flexible schedule may allow a person to maintain their output without much disruption.
- Check in from time to time, both to reassure the employee and to make sure that further adjustments or accommodations aren’t needed.
You can read the full article over at HBR.
Agile at Scale, Explained – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Center for Information Systems Research’s Kristine Dery is currently studying how agile management—the increasingly popular management methodology adopted by the likes of Microsoft, Ericsson, and Spotify—relates to the employee experience.
MIT Sloan School of Management senior lecturer and industry liaison Carine Simon writes, “The traditional method of managing, the waterfall method, which is very inflexible, planned-in-advance, linear, and not iterative at all, wasn’t lending itself at all to the flexibility and the adjustments that were necessary to make great software.”
Simon adds, “[Agile is] iterating with customer feedback, prototypes, and tests, versus taking some requirements and issuing the product maybe a year later, when the customer’s requirements have changed or technology has evolved.”
Many companies have taken note of agile’s prevalence and begun to “ask whether the method’s practices and philosophies could be scaled up to apply with equal success to other projects or even entire business functions,” according to Simon and Dery.
Simon continues, “In customer-centric processes where customer input is key, and in that sense it’s quite uncertain or fast-changing, then those would be the types of areas in a firm that lend themselves to agile.”
Check out the full article here.
Questrom Professor Named 2018-19 Batten Fellow – Questrom Blog
BU Questrom School of Business‘ Siobhan O’Mahony was recently awarded a 2018-19 Batten Fellowship by the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at University of Virginia Darden School of Business.
The Batten Fellows program, according to Darden, “provides support for prominent thought leaders and high-potential scholars who seek to generate new knowledge about entrepreneurship and innovation.”
O’Mahony, an Associate Professor of Strategy & Innovation and Academic Director of Research and Curriculum for Innovate@BU, explores how “technical and creative projects organize for innovation.”
O’Mahony plans to use her fellowship to “research entrepreneurial ecosystems and how those systems influence entrepreneurs and their efforts around venture creation.”
Read all about O’Mahony’s fellowship as part of the full article here.
