Go back to podcasts 
It’s rare to see a company with such a storied legacy continue to reinvent itself with the boldness of a startup. How does Siemens, a 177-year-old industrial automation and engineering giant, manage to stay ahead and lead the charge in talent innovation? To find out, Dimitri Boylan, CEO of Avature, met with Salma Rashad, EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Siemens, at the company’s headquarters in Munich to discuss Siemens’ People and Organization (P&0) strategy for 2030.
From repositioning its employer brand as one technology company to fostering diversity and engaging future generations, Rashad shared how Siemens is building an agile, skilled and diverse workforce equipped to thrive in times of accelerated change. Read on to discover the key transformation initiatives shaping the future of talent acquisition at Siemens.
Listening to Lead Effective Change
With extensive talent acquisition expertise across industries, Rashad was well-positioned to drive Siemens’ P&O strategy forward when she joined the organization in 2023. While acknowledging the temptation for new leaders to implement sweeping changes to establish their vision, Rashad stressed the importance of recognizing existing strengths, scaling pockets of excellence and evolving current practices with fresh ideas.
As such, her first priority was to conduct a listening tour. This refreshingly human approach involved immersing herself in candid conversations with many hiring managers and business leaders across diverse units. This wasn’t just about diagnosing challenges but uncovering stories of success and resilience within the company. This approach anchored her in Siemens’ culture while also giving her the insights needed to present an effective TA strategy.
It’s really important to understand the context, the culture and the psyche before going out and starting to do things and bring new ideas. And that listening tour has been fantastic because it has helped me uncover a lot of the areas that we are focusing our strategy on now.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Leveraging Feedback to Achieve Repositioning Success
Beyond active listening within the organization, gathering consumer feedback has played a pivotal role in identifying brand awareness gaps in key markets and building a targeted approach to repositioning Siemens as a tech-forward employer brand.
Siemens has such a long history and heritage, and I think that’s what makes it unique. It’s not really comparable with other technology companies. The ambition today is very clear: we want to become one technology company. We want to be able to leverage the scale that Siemens has, the products and the innovation to deliver faster growth, better innovation cycles and closer proximity to the customers. That’s a very exciting proposition and to be part of that transformation is very unique.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
As Boylan pointed out, this is no easy feat, considering the average consumer doesn’t experience Siemens’ industrial, automation-type technology directly. However, Rashad was delighted to share that Siemens’ repositioning efforts are already bearing early fruits.
When we think about Siemens, there are certain connotations from a consumer product standpoint. But what we have observed, through research, through focus groups and through a lot of channels, is a shift in terms of perception.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Upskilling Recruiters to Drive Sustainable Transformation
Aside from repositioning, a cornerstone of Siemens’ 2030 P&O strategy is skills development, with an emphasis on in-demand skills such as business acumen, AI and data.
In order to provide recruiters with defined learning paths and hands-on opportunities to develop their skills, Siemens has created the TA Leaders Lab. Beyond simply sharing messaging guidelines, this initiative focuses on equipping recruiters to live and breathe Siemens’ values in their interactions.
This is not only about cascading messages and saying you need to be saying these things, but actually creating learning opportunities and learning paths that bring that to life.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Building Bridges: Teamwork That Drives Success
Rashad noted that achieving sustainable results requires collaboration at every level. To that end, Siemens fosters alignment between hiring managers and recruitment teams through training initiatives that streamline processes, improve communication and drive better hiring experiences for all stakeholders.
She also highlighted the benefits of agile-inspired recruitment retrospectives involving hiring managers, whose insights provide a unique perspective on refining recruitment processes and strategies for future hiring cycles.
We do invest in hiring manager training. That allows us to explain market dynamics and what a good process looks like because sometimes, even if we find the purple squirrel, if we sit on it for maybe even one week, it’s too late. That’s where work with the hiring manager needs to be very timely and very close. We talk about it as a team sport. This is not only on recruiters to deliver, but it’s also on the hiring manager to work with the recruitment team to get the best candidate.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
In addition to fostering close collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters, Siemens extends this approach globally by bridging its Global Center of Excellence and local operations. This co-creation journey enables the company to craft solutions tailored to regional needs while adhering to overarching recruitment standards
I’ve worked in models where it was very top-down, with the center driving everything, and others that were very decentralized. Siemens is somewhere in between.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Refining Talent Strategies With Data-Driven Insights
When evaluating recruiter performance, Rashad clarified that Siemens prioritizes tangible outcomes, measuring success through hiring results and key performance indicators like hiring manager and candidate Net Promoter Scores.
While these metrics are standard in the industry, Siemens leverages them as part of a broader strategy to deliver exceptional experiences for both candidates and hiring managers. This focus isn’t just about filling roles – it’s about ensuring that every candidate, whether hired or not, leaves with a positive perception of Siemens as an employer of choice.
We have mature teams at Siemens… We’ve gone through a number of different transformations and certainly, we’ve been able to deliver as a recruitment function. So there are a lot of good things happening, and it’s always about how do we take things from good to great?”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Rashad acknowledged that Siemens’ TA team has access to a treasure trove of data that could be better leveraged. Unlocking its full potential could transform not just hiring processes but people’s experiences. By transforming raw numbers into actionable stories, Siemens aims to continuously refine its talent strategies, enhancing both recruiter performance and candidate experiences.
I think the best stories are the data-driven stories. So certainly, we are very fortunate because we sit on a lot of data, but sometimes, we are not very good at using that as part of the storytelling. And that’s where I see my aspiration here for us as a function, at Siemens, to leverage more of the data and work with partners that allow us to leverage the data.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Empowering Diversity, Inspiring Generations
Noting that Siemen’s hard-earned spot on Forbes’ list of top employers for women in 2024 was a significant achievement in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Boylan invited Rashad to elaborate on the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Rashad spoke with conviction about Siemens’ array of DEI initiatives and mentorship programs, underscoring the company’s unwavering commitment to inclusion and indicates that these issues are imperative for the organization rather than a “nice-to-have.” She stressed that for a 177-year-old company, “the basis needs to be innovation and agility, and without diversity, we are not able to bring that to life.”
Furthermore, Rashad added that she personally experiences Siemens’ commitment to DEI every day, an experience which was cemented when her two children had the opportunity to visit the organization’s Zurich office.
I was really excited to see how my daughter at 11 years old could be interested in AI and being exposed to the different technologies. So there’s something about creating that excitement early on in the journey and that is part of the culture.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Engaging Generation Alpha
The conversation seamlessly transitioned to Siemens’ generational strategy, with Rashad underlining the importance of anticipating the arrival of the upcoming workforce and revealing that the organization is already discussing Generation Alpha.
While Siemens’ societal impact isn’t always well-known, Rashad shared that the organization is “very conscious about creating that impact early on.” By analyzing their preferences and media consumption habits, Siemens has been able to create early engagement opportunities, such as sponsored coding camps for children aimed at inspiring and attracting Gen-Alpha.
This early exposure is about more than attracting tomorrow’s talent; it’s planting seeds of inspiration that could shape the engineers and innovators of tomorrow.
Embracing a Growth Mindset
Considering generational shifts in leadership and career development expectations, Boylan asked how Siemens is evolving to meet the needs of younger generations, who often expect their career trajectory to move quickly and are less inclined to accept traditional top-down leadership.
Rashad explained that Siemens is addressing these shifts by fostering a culture focused on development, adaptability and empowerment — key factors not only for meeting current expectations but also for upskilling employees with the skills needed to thrive in the future. One of the most significant innovations in this regard has been Siemens’ transformation of its performance management process — not just in format but also in focus and narrative.
The company has replaced formal, annual performance reviews with regular, dynamic “growth talks.” These discussions are less about evaluating past performance and more about fostering ongoing development.
This allows us to have a different type of conversation between a manager and their people. It can also be initiated actually by the person. So it’s not only top-down; the employee can raise their hand and just say, I want to have a growth talk with my manager.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
This innovative approach reflects a broader cultural shift – one that moves away from rigid evaluations toward meaningful dialogues centered on growth, feedback and future potential. By focusing on development rather than judgment, Siemens is aligning its processes with the evolving expectations of its workforce, particularly younger generations who value open communication and opportunities to learn and advance.
From Tenure to Potential: Siemens’ Leadership Evolution
When asked about the qualities that would define the next generation of leaders, Rashad highlighted a profound evolution within Siemens. Historically, the organization tended to select leaders with long tenures and very specific experiences, valuing their deep institutional knowledge. However, Siemens is now embracing a more forward-looking approach that prioritizes potential over pre-defined archetypes.
“I think we’ve moved away from that narrative of what the perfect leader looks like and adapted more of a growth mindset and culture of empowerment.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
Rather than having a pre-defined trajectory, Rashad noted that it was more important for leaders’ skills to align with two key roles. Those responsible for driving organizational transformation and technology innovation will need strong organizational development and change management capabilities. On the other hand, for the thousands of line leaders who run day-to-day operations, team effectiveness and people experience are key.
Rashad shared that Siemens is constantly exploring new assessment strategies to place the best people in pivotal roles and emphasized that this involves moving beyond evaluating individuals to also assessing their fit within a team context.
AI and The Future of Talent Acquisition
Boylan and Rashad’s conversation wrapped up with a topic dominating conversations in every corner of business – artificial intelligence. Asked how Siemens’ management team was dealing with AI anxiety, Rashad emphasized the importance of shared responsibility.
Across various business units, Siemens has been investing heavily in upskilling and reskilling. Internal experimentation, she noted, is playing a critical role in helping the organization anticipate and prepare for the skills of the future. In this regard, she offered the following advice:
Start small. Don’t create the big bang straight away, but find the right use case and find the right opportunities to test these hypotheses before you go out and make a bigger investment.”
Salma Rashad
EVP, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens
As their conversation drew to a close, it was clear that Siemens’ approach to its P&O strategy reflects not just strategic thinking but a deep commitment to its people. By fostering a culture of experimentation, collaboration, diversity and growth, Siemens is empowering its workforce to innovate, adapt and lead in a rapidly evolving world.
In a world where technology often seems to outpace human adaptability, Siemens’ approach serves as a reminder that progress isn’t just about innovation; it’s about bringing people along for the journey and helping them thrive in the possibilities it unlocks.
