Recruiting and talent management

The management of human resources in companies is an essential aspect of management in the digital age. The shift from automated to non-automated task owners and the potentials of digital technologies create new challenges and opportunities for Human Resources Management (HRM).

We deal with business and technical prerequisites, success factors, implementation variants and further implications of digital technologies in HRM for individuals and companies. In various projects with companies, implementation strategies for digital personnel files, electronic HR workflows, artificial intelligence-based approaches, people analytics projects, continuing education concepts, recruitment strategies and campaigns, and for the onboarding of new employees have been researched and realized in projects with corporate practice. These implementation strategies result in the “E-HRM-House” defined by the chair in order to illustrate different concepts of a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) and their application for the manifold tasks in HRM and to describe a framework of action for companies, which digital technologies can be used purposefully in which contexts.

We also research the requirements for the “Digital Workforce” in terms of attitude, skills, knowledge requirements, motivation and behaviors that are necessary to successfully shape digitization in companies. In this way, we contribute to deriving concepts for the qualification of individuals for the digital workforce.

One challenge here is to find new employees. The “war for talent” is one of the major challenges for companies. This is especially true with regard to the lack of IT talent on the labor market and thus for IT talent management in particular. With our research we contribute to a successful recruitment of talents. A key finding is that a single “one fits all” strategy is usually not effective, but rather that a comprehensive portfolio of target group-oriented strategies and measures (e.g. boomerang hires) is necessary to meet the challenges.

In the course of the research, the FISH framework was developed, which comprises a process model for defining a comprehensive portfolio of target group-oriented strategies and measures for recruiting (IT) professionals. The strategies and measures are differentiated in terms of short-term and long-term effectiveness, and the availability of talent on the labor market is taken into account. The search for talent can be interpreted as the activity of a fisherman who either casts a net and can choose from a variety of fish (short-term measures for more readily available target groups) or who fishes with a rod, the right bait and in the right place (short-term measures for scarce target groups). For long-term success, a fisherman would feed fish (long-term measure for more available target groups) or start thinking like a fish (long-term measures for scarce target groups). With this metaphor, which is the basis for the FISH framework, it has been possible in many projects to develop appropriate talent management strategies and define measures to successfully attract and retain talent for a company.