Gold at the Employer Branding Summit: How Siemens Switzerland Achieved 20x More Applications for Service Technicians
At the Employer Branding Summit 2026 in Vienna, Siemens Switzerland had two reasons to celebrate: 🥇 Gold in the Recruiting category for the Dialect & Digital project and 🥈 Silver in the Attraction category for the Siemens Excellence Campaign.
Recruiting service technicians is considered one of the hardest challenges in talent acquisition. They're rarely at a desk, hardly ever apply through traditional job portals, and drop off immediately when faced with complicated forms. Siemens Switzerland found a way and just got recognised for it.
We spoke with Melanie Will, Team Lead Talent Acquisition, who led the WhatsApp implementation project in 2023, and Roman Freitag, Recruiting Marketing & Talent Attraction Partner, who ran the social media campaign.
The problem: a desktop process for people who are never at a desk
Service technicians are the definition of deskless workers, constantly on the move, and with zero patience for multi-step application forms. Yet Siemens' existing process was built for exactly the opposite:
- Standardised forms with no flexibility for on-the-go applicants
- Desktop-heavy flows that barely worked on mobile
- A complex applicant tracking system with many mandatory fields
The result: qualified candidates dropped off before answering the first question, not because they weren't interested, but because the process stopped them.
The solution: WhatsApp as an official, permanent recruiting channel
In October 2023, Siemens Switzerland launched a WhatsApp application solution with PastaHR, not as a pilot, but as a full alternative channel for their largest job family: service technicians.
What changed for candidates:
- Apply via WhatsApp: no login, no long forms, no desktop required
- Communication in the flow they already use: questions and answers in chat, not email
- Fast response: direct replies instead of days of silence
What it meant for the recruiting team:
- Automatic pre-qualification: must-have criteria checked in the chat, unsuitable applications deprioritised automatically
- Smart candidate routing: applications land directly with the right recruiter, not a central inbox
- Document management in chat: files collected and assigned in the conversation: no chasing, no manual filing
- Campaign tracking: every channel, every region, every application tracked in one overview
The campaign: dialect instead of corporate speak
Alongside the technical rollout, Roman Freitag launched a social media campaign to reach service technicians where they actually are, including people who weren't actively looking but would consider a job change.
The project name Dialect & Digital was deliberate: instead of one uniform message across Switzerland, the campaign spoke to technicians in regional dialects with locally adapted content. No generic corporate German. Content that felt like it came from someone in the same region.
That meant:
- Videos and copy adapted per region, in local dialect
- Authentic imagery from real working life: no staged photos
- Ads targeting passive candidates, not just active job seekers
- No copy-pasting the same message into every market
PastaHR ensured the transition from ad to WhatsApp application was frictionless, including close coordination with the external creative agency to keep the brand experience consistent end-to-end.
The results: 20x more applications, without sacrificing quality
The combined campaign delivered 20x more applications. Crucially, this didn't create more work for the recruiting team, automatic pre-qualification in the chat ensured only candidates meeting the must-have criteria moved forward.
Beyond the headline number:
- More applications at locations that had previously been hard to fill
- Faster candidate responses, because WhatsApp is where they already communicate
- Siemens increasingly perceived by applicants as a modern employer that's easy to reach, a measurable shift in employer brand perception
What made it work
Four things that separated this from a typical WhatsApp experiment:
- Regional authenticity over uniformity: speaking in local dialect built trust that a corporate message never could
- A real channel, not a test balloon: PastaHR integrated with a full process behind it, not a side experiment
- Zero friction between ad and application: campaign and application flow designed as one, so there was no drop-off at the handover
- Full measurability: every region, every ad, every channel tracked, so the team could optimise continuously
What Melanie Will values most about PastaHR
The flexibility to build different application funnels for different roles. The ease of use on both sides, for candidates and recruiters alike. The measurability of every campaign KPI. And a team that responds quickly when technical questions come up.
"The platform meets modern recruiting requirements. The approach is mobile-first, future-proof and the candidate experience is measurably better."
What comes next
Siemens plans to extend PastaHR to further job families, refine regional targeting, and automate more steps in the process as new features roll out.
Still losing deskless candidates to your application form?
For roles in the field, on the floor, or on the road the difference between a form and a WhatsApp application is often the difference between a completed application and a drop-off. Siemens Switzerland proved that with a Gold Award and 20x the results.
The question worth asking: what would that look like for your organisation?
