Inside Sony Music
- In the News: Sony Music’s Journey to Greater Diversity
- Jan 13, 2022
In this third interview in a series behind-the-scenes at Sony Music Group, Martin Staudigl, Vice President People Experience (HR) at Sony Entertainment in Germany, shares with Alan Hosking what is being done to eliminate bias in the hiring process.
Alan Hosking: How have you been getting diverse employees on board at Sony Music without using bias in the selection process?
Martin Staudigl: We launched a program this year which has a comprehensive selection method, and our approach was very different. We said to ourselves that we need more young, diverse people on board, and we want to give them a certain experience.
Sony has managers who have been with the company for many years, so we wanted to think out of the box. We promoted the programme through the national media. Our message was that we do not want a CV, we do not want a resumé and we do not even want your identity in the first stage of the process.
What we requested was a video or something creative, telling us why the applicant would want to work with Sony Music. We wanted them to tell us about their passion, their “idea”, what their contribution could be. The amazing thing is we got about 300 applications, which was a lot for us! And we were really very happy and surprised by how much creative input we received. We had established a website for applicants to upload their videos, and selection was only based on the creative input of these videos. We therefore didn’t know who was behind the scenes until later in the game, when applicants had to reveal their identities. So that’s how we managed to exclude initial bias!
AH: What kind of people applied?
MS: We received applications from people aged 50 and over, and from people all over the world. Originally, we had decided we wanted to fill two positions, but we increased that to three because we got so many good applications. After the initial video, the applicants had to do another comprehensive case study, which was also fun to do. It was in essence an online assessment.
From the group of applicants, we then selected one experienced male and we selected a very young, inexperienced female. The male applicant already had his own network of artists, which also helped as we didn’t have to get new artists on board for him. While the young female was very inexperienced, she had amazing passion.
