How CV-less recruiting more than halved Siemens’ time to hire

The tech sector’s attrition rate currently sits at 13.2%.

By contrast, German multinational tech giant Siemens’ turnover rate is lower.

Jon Turner, head of the Siemens Electrification and Automation Business in Great Britain and Ireland, shares that for his business unit, attrition is in single digits.

For Turner, this impressive feat suggests that the tech giant is doing something right, particularly in the realm of recruitment.

Speaking exclusively with UNLEASH, Turner describes the Siemens’ talent acquisition team as “superb”.

Their classic approaches to recruiting are working, but, of course, that doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges and room for improvement, especially in this ever-evolving labor market.

What the tech employer found is that the ‘making the offer’ part of the recruitment process is not as certain as it was pre-pandemic.

“You invest in the journey, but by the time you come to the end of the journey, you [see] people rejecting you” – this is simply because the candidates have more opportunities and options than ever before.

Siemens realized it was operating in “a highly competitive space” and “going to the same pocket of talent [as] everyone else”.

But this pool was getting smaller and smaller because those individuals with the right digital, tech skills were becoming highly aware of just how valuable and in-demand their skills are, meaning they held the power in the recruitment process.

All of this was making it more and more difficult for Siemens to recruit – and it meant some roles remained vacant for a whopping 150 days.

‘You can’t do the same thing and expect different results’

Turner decided to take the plunge and experiment with a radically different hiring method to fix the stagnation – as well as a wider diversity – challenge.

“We’ve got to look at different pool, and a different way of bringing people into the business,” he notes.

“I’ve always been a bit of a maverick” – I work “very much with the ethos that you can’t do the same expect the same results,” shares Turner. His perspective is “what have we got to lose? Let’s give it a go”.

The approach Turner, as executive sponsor, decided on was moving away from CVs and experience, and towards skills-led hiring – this involved the huge step of writing ‘no experience required’ on the job advert.

To do this, he partnered with an existing Siemens vendor Arctic Shores, and embraced its behavior science-based hiring assessments.

The assessments are “less about regurgitating from memory what you’d done, and more about what you’re going to be”, explains Turner.

Jon Turner, head of the Siemens Electrification and Automation Business in Great Britain and Ireland.

It is important to note that Turner didn’t shake up hiring across all of the open roles in his department.

It was “very much targeted around specific hotspots, where we found the challenge the highest” (and the risk was also low), and that area was project management.

This focused approach enabled Turner to get buy in from the project management team – “it’s not a good place to be” to have a vacancy open for 50, 100, 150 days; the rest of the team has to pick up the slack, so they were open to experimenting in order to find a solution.

Leaning into potential and diverse talent pools

Turner tells UNLEASH that his goal was to “try and tap into potential”.

“I am not belittling CVs or experience”, but focusing on potential, and identifying the behaviors and skills that are actually needed for a role, can expand and diversify talent pools, leading to better hires (and in a shorter time frame).

Potential is another reason why project management was a good pilot for Siemens’ partnership with Arctic Shores – these are early career roles where “you don’t necessarily [have to have] all the…required experience on Day One”; there are real opportunities to develop people into the role.

Turner was really impressed by the working relationship with Arctic Shores – “it is a full end-to-end managed service”, “we worked side-by-side in a very motivated and energized way, and that ensured progress happened”.

Siemens started with a pilot for a single project management role – “we got an initial influx of 500 applications – that’s well above what we previously had” (over 500% higher in fact).

This created a new challenge, so Turner and his team raised the Arctic Shores assessment scores from 60% to 80% to get to a shortlist; “the further you go up the scale, the closer the behavioral fit”, states Turner.

The tech giant ended up with an eight-person shortlist – and they all have a score over 95%. Turner notes that immediately he knew they were onto a winner – “the recruiter came to me to say ‘can we give all eight a job?’”.

A major win was that “they were all energized, enthused by the process” and they were committed; “no-one dropped out, no-one disappeared”.

Plus, there was an equal gender split (a huge win as only 16.5% of UK engineers are female) – “we got more female candidates than you would expect from a traditional approach”, and that richened the process.

In the end, Turner offered the role to two individuals – one man, one woman – and now, nine months later, “they are absolutely flying”.

While they needed additional support to develop into the role, Turner explains that the Arctic Shores’ assessment ensured they had a “thirst for learning”, and would thrive (rather than drown) amid intensive upskilling.

The future of hiring at Siemens

As a result of the pilot’s huge success, Siemens decided to expand the partnership, and focus on other hiring hotspots in the early career space.

The next challenge is to figure out how to scale the partnership globally; the rest of the business has already taken interest in Turner’s pilot.

He shares: “People now say ‘we’re going to do the Arctic Shores thing’”, because they see it as “what to do to when we’ve exhausted the traditional route”, it’s almost become an insurance policy for hiring challenges.

Turner’s message to leaders unsure about shifting to a focus on potential is “what have you got to lose?”.

“I reduced my period of attraction down to nearly 60 days – that is an incredibly significant reduction, and we’ve got two highly successful candidates”.

The key is to pick the right role – “make sure it is low risk, but you’ve got a real challenge”, and then let the results speak for themselves when you’re having “conversations with any detractors that may be in your organization”.

However, Turner is very clear that success requires a real gear change in not just recruitment, but learning and development.

“If you’re recruiting for potential, you’ve got to allow that potential to be successful” – the organizations needs to make sure “the first 90 days is carefully planned, and intense”.

Are you ready to take the plunge, and ensure you have the right talent, and skills, to thrive now, and in the future?

Talent acquisition at UNLEASH World

Want to learn more about the future of talent acquisition? We have a whole stage dedicated to the topic at UNLEASH World 2023.

Grab a free ticket now for our Paris show to learn from leaders at not just Siemens, but also AstraZeneca, Emirates, L’Oreal and Canva, about how to drive hiring success.