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When it comes to the war for talent, it cannot be said that business is currently winning. In Europe, according to McKinsey\u2019s 2025 HR Monitor survey, overall hiring success (which McKinsey calculates by multiplying a company\u2019s offer-acceptance rate by the retention rate of new hires during their probation period) stands at just 46%. Businesses are no longer simply competing with one another for seasoned talent but also with retirement, as older employees leave the workforce and fewer young people enter to replace them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even as businesses achieve efficiencies by automating much of the entry-level work historically done by recent graduates, many are finding it harder to secure experienced workers to do the jobs AI cannot, leaving top candidates with plenty of leverage to say no to offers. Organizations are wasting untold levels of time, money, and effort to bring much-needed skills into their business. Such a challenge requires a new way of thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One company with an alternative is Spotify. Although the Swedish streaming giant hit headlines in 2023 for laying off 17% of its staff, it has since recovered much of that lost ground. Performance is\u00a0strong: Its most recent results, from Q1 2026, show the number of monthly active users climbed 12% year on year to 761\u00a0million, and quarterly revenue has increased by 14% to \u20ac4.5\u00a0billion. One can also read a lot into Spotify\u2019s attrition rate, which hovers between 4% and 6%, compared with the estimated global average of 20%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The key to this success, says CHRO Anna Lundstr\u00f6m, is helping talent grow within the business. \u201cFor years we were in hypergrowth\u2014and we\u2019re still hiring quite a bit,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we have also shifted to be really, really good at internal mobility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is not mere lip service; Spotify has moved from filling 20% of open jobs with internal talent to over 40% in 2025, with plans to increase this even more in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Lundstr\u00f6m, not only is this an opportunity\u00a0to cut the cost and time it takes to hire externally, it is also a critical retention tool for top performers. \u201cWhen employees leave the company, one of the main reasons they give is, \u2018I wasn\u2019t able to grow and develop,\u2019?\u201d she says. This new strategy aims to tackle that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although Spotify had a raft of internal training options for staff, it was clear that these alone were not enough. So the organization launched an internal talent marketplace\u2014Lundstr\u00f6m describes it as Spotify\u2019s own version of LinkedIn\u2014called Echo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, employees can upload profiles describing their experience and skills and be matched with internal opportunities. To further incentivize the use of Echo, Lundstr\u00f6m\u2019s team introduced a policy that hiring managers must advertise open roles internally for several weeks before turning their gaze outward.<\/p>\n
Such a reframing requires system design change, not mere platitudes, and \u201cthe numbers show that it\u2019s really working,\u201d says Lundstr\u00f6m. For large organizations, the lesson is clear: Internal mobility does not scale through policy alone\u2014it requires infrastructure, visibility, and incentives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, there will be instances where the very specific skills for a particular role cannot be found in the current talent base. But here, too, Spotify is embracing a new approach: what Lundstr\u00f6m terms \u201cprecision hiring.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many may have heard the expression \u201cCulture eats strategy for breakfast,\u201d but some HR leaders are moving away from the notion of \u201cculture fit,\u201d as evidence shows it can entrench systemic bias and homogenize the workplace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, Lundstr\u00f6m and her team interview particularly for \u201cculture-add\u201d\u2014candidates who will bring their own points of view and personalities to Spotify while still embracing what matters to the brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do an interview which is tied to our core values to ensure that you are going to be a great asset to us as a \u2018culture carrier,\u2019?\u201d says Lundstr\u00f6m. \u201cIt\u2019s harder to ask these questions than to just check whether someone can code or not,\u201d she acknowledges. \u201cBut our talent acquisition team is extremely well trained in this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For this reason, Spotify also relies almost entirely on its own internal teams to acquire new talent. \u201cWho is better to assess whether someone would be a good fit for Spotify than our own people?\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s a big part of our secret sauce that other companies may miss out on if they work with external vendors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another ingredient of Spotify\u2019s secret sauce is flat hierarchy, which Lundstr\u00f6m describes as \u201ca very Swedish leadership style.\u201d There are fewer layers of management than might be common in a similar-size organization, which helps bring leaders closer to the wider workforce, creating a culture of trust. As a result, says Lundstr\u00f6m, \u201cwe are really good at managing polarities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What she means by that, she explains, is that Spotify\u2019s leaders are skilled at maintaining multiple competing priorities at once. The most important example currently revolves around the need to upskill workers on AI. \u201cWe\u2019re asking them to learn even faster, to embrace AI and move quickly, and we can do that because we are also really homing in on their well-being.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spotify\u2019s work-from-anywhere program has been widely covered, and Lundstr\u00f6m says it has been successful in improving retention and building strong levels of trust. The organization has also run an annual Wellness Week for the past five years, where the entire company shuts down for a week to allow employees to recharge and focus on their\u00a0mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Lundstr\u00f6m, this balance is imperative: \u201cIf you over-index on tools without strong, supportive leadership, you\u2019re going to lose trust. But if you try to keep protecting culture without evolving AI, you\u2019re going to lose relevance. You have to do both.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In spite of the demonstrated success Spotify is having with its new talent and leadership strategies, Lundstr\u00f6m is keen to stress one thing: It would be an error to simply copy what the brand is doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mistake many companies make is looking at other organizations and trying to mirror something that is not them,\u201d she says. \u201cYou need to have a story that you stay true to. The best employer brand is when you and your employees are saying the same thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Accordingly, her advice for overhauling your talent strategy is to create a set of foundations to build on authentically, borrowing what is useful from companies you admire and discarding the rest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spotify\u2019s approach is not a blueprint to be copied, but it points to a broader shift in the talent landscape. As external hiring becomes less reliable, the ability to move and develop people internally will become essential. The fundamental question, therefore, is, \u201cHow easily can talent move around my organization today?\u201d For many, the answer remains: \u201cNot easily enough.\u201d?<\/p>\n
This article appears in the\u00a0June\/July 2026\u00a0issue of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune\u00a0with the headline \u201cHuman Resources Spotify\u2019s Secret To Winning The Hiring War? Keep Talent Moving And Growing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Spotifys #secret #winning #hiring #war #talent #moving #growing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to the war for talent, it cannot be said that business is currently winning. In Europe, according to McKinsey\u2019s 2025 HR Monitor survey, overall hiring success (which… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[872,818,5546,729,2510,5730,8720,8719,470,446,1077],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-growing","tag-hiring","tag-londonarticles","tag-moving","tag-secret","tag-spotify","tag-spotifys","tag-sweden","tag-talent","tag-war","tag-winning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}