The pace of change in Talent Acquisition is speeding up. It’s evident that those employers who can adapt the quickest will be the ones who get the best competitive advantage. But how do you drive fast change in a large corporation, especially one that operates globally?
My guest this week is Mike Brown, Vice President of Talent Acquisition for The Americas at Siemens. Siemens is implementing some new ways of thinking into their Talent Acquisition function which is allowing them to drive innovation, implement agile methodology and roll out a global ATS project in a very different way.
In the interview we discuss –
• The talent challenges that Siemens faces
• Siemens “TA Venture” initiative and how it is fostering collaborative global innovation
• What does Agile mean in Talent Acquisition
• Why Siemens are changing ATS and how they selected a new vendor
Mike also shares his advice to other employers on global ATS implementation and talks about what is next for Talent Acquisition at Siemens.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation.
Edward Dias [00:00:25]:
Since we’ve been using Avature ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart automation and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that, and that’s been a huge achievement.
Matt Alder [00:00:49]:
Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience. From shoulder to tap to first day.
Matt Alder [00:01:23]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 132 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The pace of change in talent acquisition is most definitely speeding up, and those employers who can adapt the quickest will be the ones who get the biggest competitive advantage. But how do you drive fast change in a large corporation, particularly one that operates globally? My guest this week is Mike Brown, Vice President of Talent Acquisition for the Americas region at Siemens. Siemens are implementing a number of new ways of thinking into their talent acquisition function, which is allowing them to drive innovation, implement agile methodologies, and roll out a global ATS project in a very different way. Enjoy the interview. Hi Mike, and welcome to the podcast.
Mike Brown [00:02:18]:
Hey Matt, how are you today?
Matt Alder [00:02:20]:
Very good and delighted to have you on the show. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Mike Brown [00:02:26]:
Yep, sure. My name’s Mike Brown and I’m running the acquisition region known as the Americas for Siemens, so both north and South America, all of the various divisions and business units and corporate functions within those countries. And I’m part of a really excellent global leadership team running the talent acquisition function here at Siemens.
Matt Alder [00:02:52]:
So, as a VP of Talent Acquisition, what are some of the biggest talent challenges that you’re up against at the moment?
Mike Brown [00:03:00]:
Well, I think we’re up against the same challenges as quite a few other companies. I think our challenges are unique in the structure of the company being a conglomerate with a variety of different businesses to support and a need for pretty highly sophisticated technical talent in almost all divisions and almost all jobs. So we’ve got a need to find very specific talent worldwide and secure that talent for our business success going forward. So that’s one challenge, just finding the right people in time when we need them. And then the other challenge is managing a large team of global recruiters to make sure they’ve got the right competencies, the right support, the right technology to do their jobs, which we think are changing very rapidly. And we take our mission pretty seriously here, that we feel strongly that if we are to succeed as a company, we absolutely need the right people and we feel like we play a vital role in that mission.
Matt Alder [00:04:18]:
So sticking with that idea of change and keeping pace with things, how do you keep pace with innovation at Siemens? Do you have any particular strategies that foster innovation within talent acquisition?
Mike Brown [00:04:31]:
Well, one of the things that we’re trying, you know, we try to make sure that we’ve got a very strong connection amongst people inside the company. So we have a social corporation where we can set up various groups to allow recruiters to connect to one another, share content, share ideas. So that’s one way of just globalizing the team is very important. Technology allows us to do so many things remotely that we used to have to do on site. And to really leverage our team and their knowledge and expertise, we need to stay connected first and foremost. So we use various groups within the Siemens social network to stay connected and communicate to one another. So that’s one aspect. A recent thing that we’ve done, which we’re excited about, still early, but pretty excited about this, is we’ve launched an internal sort of innovation concept in Talent Acquisition called TA Venture. And we’re using Trello to sort of manage the input and the workflow. And the concept is fairly simple. The leadership team knows that while we can be aware a little bit of what’s happening out in the marketplace, that recruiters are probably best suited to decide what technologies are best for them in terms of the disposition of their day to day duties. So we wanted to sort of include the whole team in the concept of innovation. So we now have a process using Trello, as I said, with this sort of, you know, internal marketing called TA Venture, where we have people around the world submit ideas, interesting technologies that they’ve heard about or seen, maybe got, you know, demonstration at a trade show or something like that. And the concept is simple. If somebody thinks something’s interesting, they put it on the board. They try to get some other people to be interested in it. They need to get approval from one of the. Not approval per se, but sort of support from one of the senior leaders in the organization, and then we move things along to pilot phase. And if we think there’s applicability at a global scale or even at a regional scale, we would then put a formal plan together and sort of move the technology forward. So we’re getting all kinds of interesting ideas from our teams around the world. Things that they feel will help them better source, you know, things that will help with recruitment, marketing, things that will help brand us a little bit better as we put jobs out on the Internet. So a variety of different technologies that people are toying with, and we’re getting far more ideas in an organized way than we would have had before. So we’re excited about that. We feel like it’s important to get the whole team engaged in the concept of innovation.
Matt Alder [00:07:48]:
So agility is a common theme that’s used in strategic talent acquisition these days. What does agility mean to Siemens, and why is it important to have technology that’s as agile as your talent acquisition strategy?
Mike Brown [00:08:03]:
I think that the world changes at a pace that I think is not going to slow down. Things continue to change. We use the terms, you know, vuca, just like everybody else. There’s just sort of rapid and profound change taking place quickly, which we need to be able to react to. So we want to have an agile organization internally, just in terms of how we organize ourselves with our teams. So we’re moving in the direction of really trying to become more of a global team as opposed to a series of units that happen to reside in different countries. So we feel like technology and the culture we create inside of Talent Acquisition are key to driving that transformation. And so we’ve done a lot to create a sense of community among our people, which then creates a common bond, common sense of mission, common partnership. Recruiters are recruiting for the same roles and the same divisions around the world happens to be in different countries. So we’re trying to create these communities of interest where people can help one another, facilitated by some of the technology that we’re now deploying. So the organization itself needs to be agile. And then we’re also, as we launch new technologies, we’re trying to take the more formal agile project methodology to heart. So we’re in the process of launching our new applicant tracking system worldwide. And in the past, like many other companies, we would have spent months, maybe years planning for every contingency, making sure we had the system designed to handle any and all eventualities. And we now don’t do it that way. We develop what we think is the minimal viable product for go live and While we launch, we are also then doing release 1.1, and when 1.1 is started up, we’re working on 1.2. So it’s an entirely different way of deploying deployed technology, which feels very different for the people on the team. And we’re also really staffing these teams with recruiters, obviously with also our IT and vendor support. But we also wanted to make sure that the recruiter’s voice was heard. I think we’ve made some mistakes in the past that we’ve learned from where we perhaps did not get enough feedback from the people on the front lines about what they need and how things work. So now we’re really making an effort to listen to the recruiters themselves and find out what they need and how things actually work in real life, so to speak. So we’re pretty happy. We’re just launching now with this Global Applicant Tracking System program, and so far, so good. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re happy with where we are so far.
Matt Alder [00:11:23]:
So in terms of the global ATS implementation and rollout, what were some of the reasons you wanted to make a change and how did you go about finding the right vendor for you?
Mike Brown [00:11:38]:
The reasons I think were simple and again, likely not unique to Siemens. We had, like most corporations, some legacy systems that were still operating. We had a tool that was deployed through most of the countries, but a few countries were not on the same applicant tracking system as some others. So that prevented us from really sort of operating in a seamless global way. And we knew that it would be beneficial and that the technology had advanced to the point where this would be possible, that we could, in fact, launch something that all recruiters worldwide would have access to. Everybody could see the same data, everybody could collaborate, we could shift and assign work based on volumes and needs in a way that we had not been able to do before. So the desire to move ahead with a TA specific launch as well, I think that’s another thing that we’ve tried to do internally is to recognize with our senior leadership, who’ve been very supportive in hr, that the technology in Talent Acquisition has evolved to the point where you may need to buy something specific for TA versus, I think, decisions made in the past where, you know, all with sort of these all inclusive HR suites that people would buy from various providers in the marketplace. So we’ve been excited about the fact that we have our own sort of application tool and, you know, moving forward with that. So one of the things we looked for was obviously we wanted something that would be functional in the short term. But we also wanted to make sure that the company that we decided to partner with would think the same way we did. Because we know things are changing and the product you buy today is going to evolve pretty quickly. So we look for some partners that we thought were of like mind in terms of strategic talent management and how things might flow together not only now but in the future. Somebody with a recruiter centric mindset, somebody that really understood how corporate recruiting actually is done. And also somebody that had the flexibility to give us a stable, powerful tool given our size and scale. We needed something that would be functional and work from a, you know, a system availability perspective, but also a software that might allow us to customize and create a new way of engaging with both candidates and hiring managers internally. And you know, we had already been working with Avature, had a good relationship with them on our candidate relationship management check in portal, the employer referral program, all these things that had previously been launched worldwide supported by Avature. And it, we did a significant amount of due diligence. But it just at the end was fairly obvious that the partner we really needed to work with on this was Avature. And it’s been really successful partnership to date. You know, they know us very well at this point. You know, we’ve got some unique requirements again given the size and scale of our company and they’ve been very supportive in terms of solutions and sort of rapid development of the, of the workflows for us and suggesting things that we may not have thought of. So it’s been, it’s been great. And we’re already having discussions with them about how the overall talent acquisition landscape may be changing in the future. They’ve got a good strategic view and they are good thought partners to us as opposed to being good, you know, software partners as well.
Matt Alder [00:15:57]:
So it sounds like you’ll have taken a lot of learnings from this implementation project and you’ve obviously done things very differently from the way that you’ve done them in the past. What advice would you give to other employers who are about to embark on a similar ATS selection and implementation project?
Mike Brown [00:16:16]:
So I think my tips would be a little bit of reiterating some of the things I’ve already suggested. But I think that first and foremost you really need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. And we had some specific goals in mind. Global accessibility to allow teams to work across border and help one another out. We needed something that was able to be customized and designed to our specifications. Something that would be, you know, powerful and give us the capability we need from both the search perspective. So I think all the standard technical stuff sometimes people skip over and I think it’s important to do that due diligence. We were very disciplined at the beginning of the project with going through in the delineation of things that we required. We were able to really hone in on things that were actually more important to us than we had originally realized, like the reporting capability and the global accessibility of the system. And then I think you have to find a partner that you are comfortable with. Somebody that you feel reflects the values or the strategic orientation to the topic that you’re looking to do. So we were happy to work with Avature in that regard. They focus on what they call strategic HR functionality. So talent acquisitions, talent management, some new employee engagement things. So that’s the space we wanted to, to sort of specialize in. So that made it a little bit easier. And then I think that what we needed to do internally was really get a changed mindset and create awareness amongst our own teams of what it was we were trying to accomplish. Like many companies, people wind up working for the most part in the country or the building or the office or home office, whatever the case may be, you know, where they’re, they’re primarily located. And it’s easy to forget that you’re part of something larger. In our case something much, much larger. So one of the things that we’ve done is try to get some meetings where people are together. We recognize that technology does enable, you know, global communication in a mobile way and on your PC and your phone and those kinds of things. But we feel like with some intelligent design, people actually meeting someplace together helps. So we launched the whole project with some meetings in certainly in Munich where we’re headquartered, people got together and then we had fairly significant sort of beginning of project meeting in Singapore where people flew in for a few days. It forces people to think outside confines of their day to day environment. If they have to travel someplace they, in many cases some people had never been before. For us, it makes people realize that you are part of a global company, not something that’s, you know, locally bound. And it also most importantly creates a sense of teamwork. We knew that this was going to be a tremendous amount of work for people in a very short time frame. So we wanted people to actually get to know one another as people and build some bonds. And it’s been successful beyond our wildest expectations. From that perspective, we’ve got global people Working together now from all over the world, working together seemingly day and night to get things done, which would include our partners from Avature as well. So it’s been great in that regard. It’s very rewarding and personally satisfying to see people come together in a way that perhaps would not have happened had they not sort of gotten together in person. So we place a lot of emphasis on that as well. And then, you know, our other big thing is, you know, the work is complicated to begin with, so try to keep it as simple as possible. The complexity will find you. You don’t need to create it at the beginning. And we also encourage people to have as much fun as possible. We work hard, but we also want people to sort of enjoy the process of working with one another and building something special. So we’re getting there and you know, several more months to go until we’re completely live worldwide. But so far progress is outstanding.
Matt Alder [00:21:18]:
Fantastic stuff. So, final question. You mentioned that you’re already looking to the future and the way that talent acquisition might be changing what’s on your radar? What does the future look like and what’s next on the agenda for talent acquisition at Siemens?
Mike Brown [00:21:35]:
So we consider ourselves fortunate because of our size and scale and the support we get from our leadership in terms of trying things in the technology space. So we realize that that’s not something that’s a given. We take that pretty seriously. We just want to make sure we’re smart about how we do things. Submissions from our teams and the TA Venture Trello board and areas I think we’re looking into now would be the whole sort of candidate job matching idea, you know, artificial intelligence. Is there a way to more effectively match candidates with jobs and vice versa that may take some of the manual work off of the recruiters and deliver, you know, pre screened, highly qualified candidate who may not have even been looking for a job to a recruiter’s inbox in a way that perhaps is faster and more efficient than it has been in the past. So the whole, you know, sourcing actions for recruiters, we think that there’s some AI play in there that we’re trying to keep an eye on and running a few pilots there. We’re also trying to look at some chatbot applications and some of the administrative areas of recruiting. So we’re running a pilot with interview scheduling chatbot, which we think might have some scalability just to sort of take some of the things that make life difficult for recruiters and support teams to maybe automate some of that using chatbots. And we’re, you know, excited about that. An area that we’re focused on now too, would be a little bit more around selection and assessment. Is there a way for us to, you know, pre qualify, pre screen, perhaps at scale in a way, using technology that we may not have really sort of focused on in the past. So we think we’ve done some good things there, but we think we’ve got more, more opportunity to move ahead. So those would be the areas I think we’re looking into. And we feel strongly that the recruiter, you know, contrary to all the press that says recruiters are going to be replaced by robots, we feel like that’s not coming anytime soon and that the at the center of this transaction, the recruiter still plays a very valuable role. We’re assuming that some of the work that people have to do now might be automated or streamlined, which would free a recruiter up to do more engagement with candidates, more engagement with hiring managers in terms of what they’re actually looking for, improve their productivity in terms of the volume of work that people can handle and the hours that they spend at work. And, you know, we’re keeping an eye on as many things as we possibly can. But we’re excited about the future. We feel very fortunate again that we work for a company that builds and deploys solutions and products that help the world to be a better place in transportation and energy and healthcare. And we enjoy the role we play in terms of bringing talented, excited people committed to that mission into the company.
Matt Alder [00:25:13]:
Mike, thank you very much for talking to me.
Mike Brown [00:25:15]:
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:25:17]:
My thanks to Mike Brown. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
