Career start 2.0: How Siemens attracts young talent with JobShop

Inspiring and winning over young target groups — a challenge for many companies and yet career starters are decisive for the long-term success of a company. This also applies to Siemens. Because despite high profile and attractive training opportunities including many benefits, the consequences of demographic change do not stop at this global player either.

Innovative recruiting for young professionals as an answer to the shortage of skilled workers

Siemens has 1,000 places to fill each year for an apprenticeship or dual study program for the following year — an undertaking that is becoming increasingly difficult. Despite attractive benefits and a long tradition of training, the innovation leader in technical education and training is feeling the growing shortage of skilled workers. The challenge of attracting young talent is also noticeable here. In particular, the high fluctuation after contract signing and before the first day of training starts represents a real challenge for the global technology leader. Compensating for these losses shortly before the start of training is a major challenge that the company would like to face when approaching trainees.

Siemens is known for always working with the latest technologies and the highest standards — so why not also in the area of recruiting? The Talent Relationship Management at Siemens Professional Education has set itself the goal of optimizing the recruitment of young professionals and meeting the increasing demand for new employees more efficiently. To achieve this goal, the team is working on various projects. The SIEYA web app created an innovative tool to increase career orientation and talent acquisition with gamified solutions and digital experiences. There is also a need for an optimal candidate journey with a career page as the center of applicant marketing. Siemens defines three key requirements for this:

1. Install orientation modules: Create clear paths for career orientation

2. Speak the language of the age group: Pick up the target group where they are

3. State of the Art website: Develop an optimal candidate journey

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Analysis: Gen Z needs and current young talent communication at Siemens

In order to implement this project and best meet the requirements for the target group, the company has first thoroughly analyzed the target group. How does Generation Z work? And what is the current structure of young talent communication at Siemens?

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Gen Z career orientation

A study by market research institute Ipsos commissioned by Siemens describes the target group as “Generation Lost.” She feels overwhelmed and uncertain about her future, particularly in the STEM sector relevant to Siemens. Technical professions and courses of study are hardly imaginable for the target group. Gen Z applicants are particularly interested in authentic insights into the job and the company and need a visualization of everyday working life. Videos and content on topics such as earnings and development opportunities are relevant for young talents on training websites.

But what does a candidate's classic journey to Siemens actually look like? Their parents are still an important mouthpiece of Gen Z. In the selection process to start their career, they have a say and often draw the attention of young talents to training and dual studies at Siemens. At this point, however, career starters usually do not yet know what or where they want to go. They end up on the career page and are in the dark about what distinguishes Siemens as an employer, what training opportunities there are and, above all, which of these offers would suit them perfectly. It was not possible to individualize the candidate journey for this target group on the existing career page.

Communication on the homepage — limited options, complex processes

In 2018, Siemens had to contend with performance problems and high costs in website design. The opportunities to set up a career site that is tailored precisely to the needs of the young target group were very limited.

The company was already using a variety of recruiting channels, including trainee portals, the career page, trade fairs, partner school programs and targeted campaigns on platforms such as Instagram. The path of the candidate journey was always clear: Everything led to the career page. From this point on, however, the further candidate journey proved difficult. The original content management system did not meet the specific requirements for seeking training. This led to expensive and complex adjustments by agencies and additional apps. The limited display options and the performance losses of the site made the application process significantly more difficult. As a result of the additional applications, Siemens lacked meaningful data on applicant and click behavior on the career page, which made it difficult to find benchmarks and clues for concrete improvements.

Based on this knowledge, the analysis showed that the target group-specific content could not be presented well due to technical barriers, that the tonality was intended too strongly from a Siemens perspective and that it did not meet the requirements of Gen Z. The entire candidate journey was not intuitive — especially from the perspective of young candidates. The texts of the job advertisements were too detailed in terms of technical detail and the visual implementation still offered a lot of room for improvement.

“It is essential to actively support our target group in their career orientation and, in the best case, to get them excited about the innovative career portfolio and exciting fields of activity at Siemens. We achieve this through the continuous development of innovative formats and cross-channel interaction on equal footing with GenZ at events, on social media and, of course, on our career page.”
Stefan Zeidler, Team Lead Talent Relationship Management

The solution

The target group addressed by Siemens did not achieve the desired success. A stumble-free speech from Gen Z thus became one of the most important requirements in the process of optimising the career website. With regard to a smooth candidate journey and the needs of Gen Z, this resulted in the following solutions:

• ● The career website should be made more attractive.

• ● The focus is on the career selection of the target group.

• ● Application processes must be improved.

• ● Interaction with potential applicants should be facilitated.

• ● A seamless candidate journey, considered from an applicant's point of view, must be created.

• ● Innovative technologies such as AI tools should be integrated to optimally meet the needs of Gen Z.

The implementation

The core of the solution was JobShop by talentsconnect. A tried and tested career site that meets the requirements of a modern candidate experience and converts more qualified applications. With its structure, it offered the perfect conditions to meet Siemens' requirements.

Clear structure for the ideal career choice

Through a clearer presentation of occupations in job families, the career website was given a structure that fits the information needs of the young target group — both on the desktop and in the mobile view. Where previously only drop-down menus made access to individual jobs possible, Siemens can now display entire job families and thus pick up job seekers where they are: for career orientation. For example, career starters can see at a glance whether the electrical engineering job family is attractive to them and whether it is worthwhile to dive deeper into the jobs offered there.

The career page not only offers more available information and orientation, but also presents the content itself in a fresh guise and target-group-oriented presentation. The Siemens Professional Education (SPE) team launched the “Everything with a Future” campaign. Siemens is still seen in some cases as a conservative large corporation that primarily manufactures household appliances. With the campaign, they dispelled prejudices. With targeted job descriptions, benefits and success stories, they meet Gen Z on equal footing and support them in their career choice. The core message is: “At Siemens, you have a wide range of opportunities to use your individual interests and talents in a job that actively helps shape the world of tomorrow for the better. With an apprenticeship or dual study program with us, you can be sure that you are doing... Everything with a future.”

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Data-based recruiting and maximum transparency

With the newly established Recruiting Home in the JobShop, the company also has full data transparency and can use meaningful data on applicants' click behavior to specifically decide which content is useful for Gen Z at which point in the job profile and whether it really works. In doing so, the company benefits from benchmarks based on data from over three million users from other job shops per year, which help to ensure continuous improvements and drive forward the development of the recruiting strategy.

In addition to this fundamental reorganization of the career page, three central AI-based elements are used, which fundamentally facilitate orientation, career information and online applications and reinvent the digital applicant journey:

1.Chatbot

The chatbot, affectionately referred to as “SieMe”, was specially developed to represent a trusted person and competent advisor for young people. Using age-appropriate language, he speaks directly to the target group and is available to answer any questions about Siemens as an employer. By integrating artificial intelligence, the chatbot can not only provide information about Siemens-specific information, but also answer an almost endless range of questions and conduct small talk with the target group. Above all, however, the focus is on information about locations, training courses offered, salary and commitment to sustainability. Thanks to the use of machine learning, it is a learning bot that continuously learns through interaction and errors.  

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‍‍‍2. Jobfinder:

The Jobfinder is a short and concise Matching Wizard that invites you to discover potential training and study programs in a fun way. It transforms search logic into answer logic: The young talents answer a few questions about their level of education and interests. On the basis of this information, skills and competencies are identified and a suitable persona is created as a result. The result: accurate job suggestions for this persona in percentages and thus tangible suggestions for suitable training and study programs from Siemens.

‍The results

Since 2018, the JobShop from Siemens Live and in autumn 2023, a successful relaunch took place for “Career Start 2.0”. All marketing measures are aimed at directing potential applicants to the career page, assisting them there and encouraging them to apply. The results are not long in coming and are already more than promising:

• ● With the JobShop, the user experience was significantly improved and an excellent conversion rate was achieved: 12% of all users click on Apply.

• ● The content is convincing — this is also shown by the time spent on the career page, as Siemens is 3 minutes and 49 seconds above the benchmark of 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

• ● The high number of users and at the same time low bounce rate of just 18% underlines that the candidate experience is also significantly more effective today.

• ● The job finder is successful: Those who complete the Wizzard are 3% more likely to apply.

‍Conclusion and outlook

Since 2018, a comprehensive redesign of the communication and application structure, which focused more on the target group of young talent, has significantly driven recruiting success at Siemens. This makes the JobShop not only the ideal main touchpoint with the target group, but also the core of the entire recruiting strategy. The convincing results of this national success have meant that the project is now also being expanded to Austria. There is already great interest here in integrating the job finder in order to further increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the career page.

However, the journey to a better career start is far from over at this point. In cooperation with talentsconnect, Siemens is continuing to work on concepts that move the company forward in the area of recruiting aspiring talent. For example, a comprehensive channel analysis, A/B testing of new channels and the expansion of the organic reach of the Siemens JobShop through SEO are planned in order to identify the strongest feeder channels for career starters, generate more suitable reach and at the same time reduce costs. In addition, early fluctuation should be significantly reduced through a target group-specific pre-boarding concept so that trainees and dual students who sign a contract with Siemens actually start on the first day. These measures not only increase efficiency in recruiting, but also improve the long-term retention of young talent within the Siemens Group.