How the Real World Meets the Digital World in TA with Salma Rashad | SocialTalent

We need to double down on advisory because we're not working with hiring managers that know how to get stuff done and are used to it. No, there are things that are emerging. There's technology that is emerging, there are skills that are emerging, there are strategies that are emerging. So we also need to make sure that hiring managers are enabled in that front. And if we don't have a TA function that knows how to play this part, then we definitely miss the vote on, on on these recruitments.

Hi and welcome to the show. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And this week on the podcast we're speaking with Salma Rashad, EVP and global head of Talent Acquisition for Siemens about how the real world meets the digital world in ta. Salma, you're very welcome to the podcast. I was wanting to give you my starters off by giving the audience a little bit about yourself, your job, your role, maybe a little bit something more personal about you and your interests and your family.

Thank you Johnny for inviting me. Hi everyone, I'm Salma Rashad. I'm the global head of Talent acquisition at Siemens. I lead the global talent acquisition function that is responsible for hiring over 40,000 hires a year. So it's a pretty exciting job. A little bit about myself. I chose talent acquisition as a career. I think that's something I'm very proud of and that's where actually when I started my career in human resources, I've gone through a number of different roles until I always say I saw the light and landed in talent acquisition and since then I haven't looked back. Personally, I am a global citizen. I've lived and worked in a number of different countries. Egypt is my hometown. However, I have started my HR career in Chile in South America and currently now living in Switzerland. Proud mom of two children, married. On the personal side, hobbies wise love scuba diving. So anything water related activities, I'm game.

Salma, we could talk about scuba diving. I did not know about that about you. I, I used to scuba dive when I lived in the Cayman Islands and I, I was scuba diving three times a week and I hadn't done it in 20 years or maybe 15, 16 years and I was in Malta two years ago and I said, you know what, I, I'm going to go back and learn and for anyone out there who used to do this, the dive instructor said, you pick it up. I was like, well I haven't done it in 16 years. And I was nervous. I jumped in the water and it all came back and yeah, I've been scuba diving again ever since. And it is, it is a. Is a blissful thing to do.

It is, it is. I always tell my team it's the closest thing to meditation. You're underwater, you're surrounded by people, beautiful ecosystems, you feel very small, you feel at peace. The only thing you need to do is breathe. And that is so relaxing. So I enjoy scuba diving and I try also to coerce a little bit my team into guiding them towards that direction.

After the last couple of years with hiring, the way it's been up and down, introduction of AI, all the changes, I think so sitting back and breathing is good advice for many teams. Sam, I want to talk a little bit about Siemens and its business and its strategy. I'm very familiar in my part of the world with Siemens products from the old days when the company was in the phone business. I was a proud owner of an SF45 phone back in the late 90s. My first ever music I ever played off a phone was off a Siemens device. People step into Siemens in the past, maybe elevators or they step onto trains made by Siemens or a lot of industrial components and machines. But Siemens has changed a lot over the years. Can you tell me a little bit about the organization today, what it produces, the products, services, and maybe a little bit about the one technology strategy that was recently announced about the business?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the brand Siemens always brings a lot of different, I would say, emotions and connections to people. So something that we are very proud of. And we always talk about how Siemens combines the real and the digital world because we are actually focused on creating technology that transforms the everyday for everyone. And that's what actually unites us at Siemens. Because if we think about the breadth of the portfolio that we have, the ambition of the company is really to empower the customers to accelerate their digital and sustainability transformation. So if we think about the breadth that I mentioned and you talked a little bit about, it actually goes from energy grids, supplying buildings, infrastructure, mobility, so really developing and growing that. And this is where actually it empowers our customers to become much more competitive, resilient and sustainable. The One Tech company is actually our North Star. So it really defines the path that we are taking towards the future. So with that, we want to have a stronger customer focus. We want to be able to innovate faster and grow faster as a company.

So this is a unusual time in hiring. I would say we have across the globe, yes, differences in terms of different markets are moving at different paces. But you have this dichotomy of markets where hiring is harder than ever, but candidates are reporting it's difficult to find the right jobs. This kind of unusual world and it's different across different industries and you work across many different geographies and as you say, several different industries, whether it be a product organization that's kind of hard industrial, real tangible products engineering oriented businesses, to software, technology and the AI world. So I imagine you're hiring within those 40,000 hires a wide range of skills. Talk to me about the competitive environment for those skills in the last couple of years. Talk to me some of the challenges and changes that you're seeing on scale.

Yeah, I think we've observed really quite a dramatic change there for sure. And we see that across the different markets, but also across the different industries where we are playing. I think one of the interesting dynamics that we see evolving is obviously some non traditional competitors that are maybe fast growing use certain levers to attract candidates. But we know that is not very sustainable in terms of, of retention strategies. So we really try to focus on the value proposition that we have at Siemens. So in that environment, whether that is very much around the geopolitical challenges or very much driven by the market dynamics, we want to stay true to what the core of a career at Siemens actually means. That focus on technology with purpose, that focus on sustainability. And I think these are important dynamics for us when we are thinking about talent attraction strategies, for sure we're always looking and leveraging data to be able to anticipate as much as we can, some of these trends. But the important thing I would say is making sure that we set up an agile environment and an agile function that allows us to be able to scale up, scale down, adapt to business changes. And I think this is going to be really key from what we've observed so far to continue that growth.

Are you seeing in the two years or so you've been in the role, would you say that the candidate volume of applications is consistent, that it's, you know, as, as difficult or easy as it is it was to hire two years ago, as it is now Are what are some of those changes in the market dynamics that you perhaps have seen in those 24 months or so?

Yeah, I, I think it's quite a diverse response that I will give you because on one hand our teams actually deal with huge volumes of applications. I think we're lucky in that sense because Siemens has a strong brand, so pretty much very well positioned. But I think we see as well a difference in certain markets where the brand is recognized, we definitely see that, I would say from a volume standpoint, much higher. But when it comes to certain markets where we are growing, or maybe growing in specific segments where candidates would not necessarily associate Siemens with that segment, I think that's where we see that variance actually kicks in. And I believe that's actually the importance of having a segmentation strategy. Because with that volume, with this diversity of hiring, we need to be able to cater for the talent segments that we are keen to attract. We also need to understand what, what are these business critical skills? Where is diversity going to help us gain and get better access to talent? So all of these I see as levers for us to be much more competitive in this environment.

You mentioned something really interesting there, because a lot of organizations on your scale will try and go for scale. They try and go for a common model that works across every market, every type of organization. This is the way we hire, this is the way we do it. And largely speaking, everyone doing recruiting does it pretty much the same for any role. Considering the difference of the roles and skills you're hiring for in different markets and those dynamics. Salma, have you considered that in the structure in terms of some role, you know, some roles you have to basically create and some, you know, the profile of recruiters will be very different for this, this part of the business, for these types of roles than perhaps this other role. Because, you know, if I do the maths on you get 4 million applications, you said 40,000 hires, it's 100, you know, 100 applications per role. But I imagine it's 500 applications for one role, two for another. Imagine that there's huge variance within that. So how do you think about how you have to structure a global team when you have such differences in the market dynamics of what you're hiring for?

Yeah, I think this was actually one of the surprises I had when I joined Siemens because we have a pretty much decentralized model. So I think that can bring advantages and disadvantages for sure. But one of the important component is actually how we believe in the power of the ecosystem when it comes to working at Siemens. And I'll come slightly to that later, but just addressing your question around that scalability and that scale of recruitment. So when, when I joined Siemens and looked at how decentralized our model is, of course, you know, there's always a first reflection, say, you know, if only this was one team, we can do one thing in the same way, etc. But that's not the reality. This is not the market reality. We have such diverse businesses and I think that's where coming in and looking into possibilities within that environment has opened up interesting opportunities for us and pathways. And when I reflect on where we are with our TA strategy, that actually was a co creation journey from all the different leaders. We've come up with what we call the three A's. And this is about improving agility, talent, access as well as advisory. And with that then we are all playing towards the same. So that's our North Star. We all believe in creating exceptional experiences. So regardless where we sit, how we are structured, we are united by that North Star which I think is much more powerful sometimes than having rigid structures and getting too hooked on the structural component into any environment.

I love that the common philosophy or way of working, so to speak, or strategy with different execution as required by the different needs of the businesses, different geographies, different roles. Siemens has always to me, you know, when I think of Siemens as an organization I always think of science, I think of technology, I think of engineering and therefore I think of data, I think of that kind of rigid structure. And you know, my experience has always been you're a data driven organization. And I was, you know, really, I guess not surprised, but, but impressed to see an initiative you brought in during the year which was around, around a consistent way of trying to assess talent, but also one that, one that drives a much higher value added candid experience. Would you mind sharing with me, you know, your, your thoughts on assessment, on trying to find quality talent across the business and the initiative that you brought in and maybe tell us a little about what, where it came from and what it looks like?

Yeah, I think one of our strategy pillars is around increasing quality and speed and I think that's everybody's more or less mantra in talent acquisition. But when we looked at certain components of our TA journey and our hiring journey, I think this is where we realized that we would have a bigger impact if we from the offset set up the hiring journey in a way that would be much more attractive and much more human in a way because we're dealing with huge volumes. So we want to make sure that our recruiters of course are efficient. On the other hand, we have a candidate on the other side that is waiting, a candidate that is excited about the prospect of the company. And I think this is where the assessment piece plays an important component here because going through the sheer number of volumes has to be scientific. On the other hand, we didn't want to lose the human component in the experience and that's why we looked at partnering with, with one of our vendors around introducing strengths based assessments. And I think it was really pretty interesting approach because we didn't go at it with a big bang and trying to implement that in one go. We actually use strength based assessments for development purposes here at Siemens. And one of the important pillars actually of Siemens Global Strategy is around growth mindset. So we're very big on promoting development, learning opportunities and leveraging strengths based. In that sense, 40A was something that we wanted to explore. So what we did was actually to create a pilot test and learn from that, see how people experience this. And the essence of it was really very simple in a way because as part of the hiring processes, candidate can opt for that, they are offered this strength based assessment. And this also allows us and allows the hiring manager to have a different conversation. When it comes to the interviewing part, it's not only about how you do the job and whether or not you can do the job, but what can you bring to the job that makes you different. And at the end of the day, even if you're not successful in this journey, you actually go away with something for yourself. So the report is the gift, as we like to say to candidates in this process. So definitely this has created a much more positive candidate experience, not only on the candidate side, but even on the hiring side because hiring managers started having maybe different level of conversation, understanding and leveraging strengths as part of the interview process. And there is an element of continuity. So if a candidate is successful, then they join Siemens, they can continue to use that in their development journey within our company.

There's a lot going on there, Salma, and I'd love to break it down, if you don't mind, and maybe if we can start with the assessment piece. What I'm guessing you get from this is that every interviewer, well, certainly the hiring manager is having a consistent approach to assessing the skills they're looking for. So when defining the skills they need for the job, there's a strength based assessment that they can use to begin the conversation. The interview with the candidate, rather than most interview processes where you just start with the CV and you're going with those keywords. So the strength based assessment, I'm guessing, drives the conversation in a more focused way, in a more consistent way around the skills that we're hiring for and probably tease you up more for a screen in approach than a screen out approach. Am I reading that correctly? Is that, are they some of the benefits? Is that how it plays out?

Yes, indeed. I mean, as many organizations we are trying to adopt more of a, of a skills based hiring approach. However, this is not entirely, you know, completely implemented yet. We are testing, we're learning on a couple of things there. But as you rightly said, it changes the conversation. And I think that's what we wanted to achieve because we know that managers by default and even recruiters, we tend to look at the CV as a starting point and we do as well. So it complements, I would say we have not moved away from CV screening, but it's a, it's a great compliment to allow us to think about our growth mindset because actually that's one of our Siemens strategy pillars. So if we're not living that through our hiring experience, does that only apply when you join the company? Oh, I think we wanted to bring that earlier in the process and test from both our sides. Right. From the candidate standpoint as well as from our hiring managers and recruiting team. And one of, I think interesting insights was actually around how it helped candidate even gain confidence in the interview process, but also when they are talking to the hiring managers and throughout the hiring journey. Because that is positive psychology, right? This is how you can fit, this is how you can bring value. And where is it that you bring value? So, so I think that boost definitely creates a more positive environment for candidates and for such competitive roles. Knowing the volumes of applications, I think it helps candidates stand out as well.

I love that because most assessment processes that perhaps exist before an interview are about knockout questions and trying to remove candidates. And I guess the feeling you're left in that process is, oh, I did something wrong, I'm not good enough. Whereas I love this approach where a candidate is empowered to go, here's your focus. I think you focus on seven strengths for the candidate at the start that they get to see as part of this process. And again, the interviewer frames it hopefully from the perspective of what is this candidate's strengths rather than trying to find the holes. What's been the feedback from candidates? What kind of data do you have to say that candidates appreciate this? Like they, like I imagine they would.

Yeah. I mean we, we cover that through the NPS scores. So we've definitely seen an improvement. And I think that's where, when we started this journey, of course there are always a lot of voices saying, is this relevant for the acquisition or not? How are you going to use this? And that's where we leverage the data to build that business case, actually. So as I mentioned, we started with a Pilot and we made sure that we looked into the improvement in the NPS scores and that was I think one of the biggest drivers for us. We've seen really high level of satisfaction, but also from a drop off rate standpoint, knowing that there are certain talent segments where we need to be fast enough and we have seen that materialize through that. I think these are for us some of the data points that allowed us to say, right, let's continue to scale this pilot further, adopt this. And we've actually rolled it out last year as one of the global standards in terms of recruitment. So I think it, it maybe just relates back to your earlier question around is there one way of doing things at Siemens and actually not. And this is where I think that beauty of testing and experimenting. But if we see something that will create that positive experience and if we see that is something that will actually be widely adopted and makes sense, then we roll it out and make it a global standard.

I love that, that culture, the science behind it, the testing and the experimentation that leads to improvements and outcomes. Salma, you mentioned the three A's and the last one there, I believe you said was advisory. With the technology obviously in place for strengths based assessment for candidates and a more automated experience that enhances their experience and improves the hiring process. Talk to me about maybe the, the human side of it, the people side of it and the advisory part. When you look at that as a pillar of those three, as one of the three as. Talk to me about what your vision is, what your expectation is around advisory and what are some of the challenges there to overcome within ta.

Yeah, I think TA is one of the functions where I believe we have such potential in terms of that partnership with the business and creating that value to the business. We have direct impact to the bottom line. That's how I see the strategic importance of that function. So for us I think that was around upskilling. So thinking about the capabilities of our team to make sure that we are in a position to play that advisory role because we are very fortunate to be at the front line working with hiring managers, working with candidates, understanding what's happening in the external market, translating that into, into talent strategies, also translating what's, what's happening on the internal front, whether that's transformation, growth and so on, into attraction strategies. So I think that requires a certain level of capability and that's where the advisory piece comes in. I've worked in many different environments where TA was very reactive. TA was transactional, TA was strategic. And I think we've all always had the most satisfaction playing that strategic role. So definitely one of the important components, as I mentioned, is bringing that advisory role to the business. But we also acknowledge that this is not only about ta, this is about TA being a team sport. As we always hear and like to think about. It takes two to tango. So we want to have a hiring mindset as well to foster that. Collaborate better with our hiring manager, collaborate better with our HR partners. And that's where the advisory piece comes in. So upskilling for sure is an important component. Enabling the team with data, but thinking as well, how do we enable also our hiring managers is part of that journey towards advisory.

I love this idea where the real world meets the digital world. We've talked a lot in the last year as an industry about how AI can automate some of those processes. And I think TA teams that were delivering purely their transactional services, you know, are at risk. I see opportunity, but risk in terms of, from, you know, the transactional stuff can be done by technology. Now we're seeing many, many use cases if not fully scaled. We're certainly seeing the beginning of it. But that advisory part is forgotten about because where when the real world meets the digital world is when a hiring manager meets an automated system. And if the hiring manager is excellent at hiring, very experienced at hiring, I think she can manage through that process herself and has good instincts. She maybe hired hundreds of people over her career, you know, uses a rigorous process, has good, high standards. But the majority of hiring managers just don't. They're not as experienced, they don't have the expertise. And no matter how good a tool you have, you could have a, this is my opinion, you could have a chatbot telling you exactly how to do it. The execution of that is hard. And that's where an expert on hand, an advisor is so needed that you need somebody who does this every day, who lives and breathes in it, as you say, in the candidate market, the processes to be there. As your advisor, I think that is very much the role that's emerging that we need from ta.

Absolutely. And one of the interesting actually insights that we had when we looked and analyzed our, our, our sheer hiring Vol. We've looked also at the frequency of how much certain hiring managers hired a year. And it was I think one of the aha moments that we had because you look at these, you know, 40,000 recruitments hiring and very, very small percentage are actually experience and repetitive hiring. So you have quite a diverse number of managers who not only hire once a year, but hire every once in two years or three years. And imagine that for us from a TA standpoint. So that was definitely one of the moments that really created that opportunity for us that we need to double down on advisory because we're not working with hiring managers that know how to get stuff done and are used to it. No, there are things that are emerging. There's technology that is emerging, there are skills that are emerging, there are strategies that are emerging. So we also need to make sure that hiring managers are enabled in that front. And if we don't have a TA function that knows how to play this part, then we definitely miss the boat on these recruitment.

I imagine to our initial conversation, Salma, where we talked about the need for difference in terms of some of the process for different markets, different businesses, different skills. The reverse of that is that as a global organization, there's a need for certain levels of consistency in how you hire, how you assess how you treat a candidate. And I imagine you could have somebody who's very experienced at hiring, but they did it at a different company and they're six months in Siemens and it's basically hard to know if they know how to do it the way that Siemens want it to be done. And that's not to say that the old way is wrong or right, but you want a consistent way and it's not going to be the same as the other organizations they have probably worked for. So that consistency is probably equally important.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the areas where we collaborate very closely with our learning and development organization. We at Siemens focus a lot on people, experimenting, experience. And one of the things that I, I was really excited to see actually is how we map out the journey of, of being a manager. And we have what we call the moments that matter. And these moments that matter include certain moments where as a manager I need to recruit, as a manager I need to. I don't know, there are other moments, of course, I need to promote someone as a manager, I need to manage someone, sick leave, etc. And we have partnered very closely with the learning organization to make sure that we are enabling the managers with the right level of content, with the right level of processes as well that helps them understand how good would look like at Siemens. But it's not about a rigid way of doing things, but it's just these like learning bites, sound bites that nudges them towards, you know, executing how a good recruitment process would look like. Plus of course complementing that with the advisory piece from from a TA standpoint. And that's where we, we are tackling it here at Siemens.

It's exciting. You know, 2025, this is a really interesting time, I think to work in this industry. I think it's the most interesting time in the 20 odd years I've been in this 28 years I've been doing this because there's so much opportunity in terms of where, you know, the technology is changing. A lot of it, a lot of the processes which allows frees the people up to do more. When you look to the future, you look to the next three to five years of your own strategy and the industry in general. Saba, what excites you? What makes you nervous? What are you interested in? What are you thinking about? What are you, what problems are you trying to solve? What questions are you trying to answer?

I think probably what excites me and what worries me are probably the same in a way. It's a coin with two sides. So AI is the first one for sure. I think we know that it has solid potential, but it's not the one stop shop that everybody expected. And that certainly is materializing in how we see the offerings, how we see companies adapt into that. I love the thinking that we started with AI as this can supercharge productivity, but now we are thinking about it as a tool for innovation and that is something that I see a great shift. We started from AI is going to take my job to how can AI.