Rethinking the skills gap: how Siemens is helping companies connect with the right talent through digital credentials 

In recent years, the skills gap has been one of the most pressing challenges for companies in design, manufacturing and lifecycle management. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ report, 60% of businesses are holding back on transforming their business because of local skills gaps.   

Companies can no longer afford to rely on traditional talent acquisition approaches. Instead, companies are getting increasingly creative with how they recruit, upskill and source talent in preparation for a future where skilled talent grows increasingly scarce.  

At Realize LIVE Americas, Belinda Medellin, global academic digital initiatives manager with the Siemens Empowers Education and Startups (SEES) team, will be delivering a session titled “Finding the Right Talent: Connecting through Credentials with Siemens Empowers Education and Start Ups.” This session will cover how we’re collaborating with both commercial clients and academic partners to address this unique hiring challenge. 

Taking place in Reef A at 10:30 AM PDT, this engaging session will answer key questions about how our credentialing program connects businesses with the right talent. Below is a preview of the session. 

Connecting your organization with the talent you need to innovate through credentials

When considering the growing skills gap and the increasingly complex hiring needs of today’s manufacturing organizations, the SEES team took a closer look at how credentials could be leveraged to build robust talent pipelines. 

We asked ourselves: how could credentials improve employers’ ability to measure the diverse ranges of skills crucial for success today? And how can credentials assist employers with evaluating new graduates’ readiness for today’s evolving work environments? 

With these questions in mind, SEES partnered with Credly, a digital platform that revolutionizes talent acquisition through skills-based hiring. In doing so, we’ve created a wide range of digital badges that students can earn to prepare themselves for the workforce and make it easier for employers to find candidates with the skill sets they need. 

Credentials that correlate to real-world skills 

As a student, it can be frustrating to complete courses and advance through an academic program without knowing how to list these qualifications on a resume. On the employer side, it can be challenging to ascertain which academic experiences truly translate to preparedness for the workforce.  

That’s why SEES created a broad range of digital badges that students can earn by completing courses, studying relevant topics, attending workshops, using different software platforms and more. 

Students who have gained these digital badges can then opt-in to share their profile with potential employers. These employers can search for and filter the database by badges, finding students who have earned the mix of qualifications needed to excel at their organization. 

Employers can view the criteria for any badge, which gives them a better understanding of the time, effort and learning that students invested into earning the badge.  

In fact, companies interested in proactively addressing the skills gap can even partner with Siemens to create specialized digital badges tailored to their company’s unique hiring needs. To learn more about creating customized badges for your organization, be sure to stop by our “Ask the Expert” Academic booth at the event. 

Connecting employers with candidates who possess both hard and soft skills 

Academic STEM programs tend to focus on specific “hard” skills like data science or software development. But many employers are finding that the most successful candidates back up these hard skills with soft skills like leadership capability, resilience, flexibility and creative thinking. 

For example, companies are interested in learning if a candidate will be an active listener or how skilled they are at collaborating with a team. 

Digital badges are another way to evaluate these soft skills and give employers a sense of the holistic value a candidate can bring to their team. 

Your partners for building a robust talent pipeline 

Our digital badge program with Credly is just one example of our broad efforts to connect tomorrow’s best and brightest designers, engineers and manufacturers with current commercial leaders.  

To learn more about our credentialling program, be sure to join us at Reef A at 10:30 AM PDT at Realize LIVE Americas for this session titled “Finding the right talent: Connecting through credentials with siemens empowers education and start-ups.” Attendees are also invited to stop by our “Ask the Expert” Academic booth to meet Belinda and learn more about the program.