Deutsche Bahn believes that technology is important when improving the candidate experience. Focusing more on tracking systems is key to attracting potential employees. Recruitment Tech interviewed Kerstin Wagner, manager of talent acquisition at Deutsche Bahn, at the UNLEASH World conference in Paris about why technology suits a wide variety of roles.
Technology in talent acquisition
Constant hiring in Deutsche Bahn requires the best recruitment technology. “I’m always telling people technology and data is one of the key success factors in talent acquisition,” Wagner says. “So yes, we’re using technology, but it’s important for me to say that it’s not because technology is fancy, sexy or that everybody is into technology and we also have to use it. No, we think of our candidates as customers, so we want to make the recruitment process sexy.”
Suitable for data and tech roles
Since technology has become customary in almost every role, it’s important to have jobs that use these attractive skills. “The main part of our specialised recruiters is that they have their own community of school leavers, blue-collar workers, engineers and IT people,” Wagner says. “But we also have HR marketing, employer branding and social media roles.”
“We have our own tech team, so they screen the market from a tech perspective to see how we can use technology in recruitment.”
According to Wagner and Deutsche Bahn, using one technology platform for these roles is more effective as a one-data approach. “We are using the ATS, so that is a global roll-out. That is the platform we use for the whole recruiting process, as it ensures we’re generating data here too.”
Data mindset approach
Recruitment is also about using data to study talent pools and create hiring techniques based on employee retention, business objectives and marketing. “For me, it’s also important that we have a data mindset,” Wagner says. “Using technology is one thing, but being able to use the technology is another when helping people to understand data. We have this data mindset we want to implement to help employees learn data, which makes us even stronger.”
‘Metaverse is the new kid on the block’
There are more companies mixing virtual worlds with real-life aspects. “That’s another example of how we use technology”, Wagner confirms. “So, if there’s something coming up, we check it and think how we can use it to be more candidate-centric. Therefore, we came up with metaverse because there are target groups out there who could meet in the metaverse.”
“The metaverse can show us, as Deutsche Bahn, that we’re an attractive employer with all of our jobs.”
Having experience with VR and HR can also help with implementing the metaverse into certain companies. “Five or six years ago, we were probably the first ones using VR in trading. That was the first pilot, even there at that time,” Wagner says. “A gamer, who was an intern, approached us and asked why we were not using VR to show our jobs to other people. So, how could we possibly bring our different jobs to other candidates? Since then, we use both VR and AR to help find candidates and build the foundation for exploring technology.”
Technology in the labour market
We asked Wagner about future roadmaps for Deutsche Bahn in terms of technology. “There are many ideas on our roadmap, but we have to title this tight labour market. That is a really big challenge for all of us and it’s also a challenge for each era. So, using all of these tech possibilities, we have to become way better on data and that’s still on our roadmap.”
Podcast version
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