Siemens Electrification and Automation wanted to achieve 20% growth in the UK and Ireland within three years. To do this, it needed to significantly expand its workforce and develop employees’ skills, and conventional recruitment was not meeting demand. The company also wanted to boost gender diversity among its engineers, and reduce the cost of and time to hire. It decided to work with business psychology experts Arctic Shores to design a ‘hiring for potential’ model. This would include job descriptions that highlighted competencies and transferable skills, state that no CV was required, sift for potential based on psychometric scores, and a new approach to interviewing.

To gauge impact, Siemens ran traditional recruitment methods alongside the new model. It had previously used Arctic Shores for early years recruitment but had not yet used it for sifting or experienced hires, where it would effectively be replacing a CV. It uses interactive tasks rather than questions to gain a holistic picture of a candidate’s potential, and can give more accurate predictions based on neuroscience. It can also level the playing field for those from under-represented groups. The approach also aligned perfectly with Siemens’ commitment to sustainable and profitable growth.

Out of a selection of eight candidates ‘chosen’ by Arctic Shores, the company felt it could have hired every single one that was invited to interview, even though none of these candidates would have made it through traditional CV screening. This meant the hiring for potential approach had been a resounding success. It will now be embedded across other future hiring across the business, saving hundreds of hours of manual screening, generating positive feedback and thriving new recruits.