Carpool recruiting: hitch a ride to your new job.

Whoever hitches a ride gets, as a rule of thumb, a favorable travel price. In the best case, a good conversation and even a new and lasting friendship develop as well. Yes, I have to admit that I’m currently not registered with any carpool services. Nevertheless, I like the principle and was curious when I heard that our colleagues in Research & Development were planning to do job interviews inside a Mercedes. Their goal: establishing friendly and enduring business-relationships with talented young engineers interested in autonomous driving.

That’s why I stopped by the very first “RD applicant day”. The idea: HR and specialized departments selected about 40 of the most promising candidates out of a pool of almost a thousand applicants - who then had job interviews with their prospective future bosses while driving around B?blingen in a Mercedes. From all I’ve heard some very good conversations evolved. I also personally participated and had a very interesting chat of my own with Molka Elleuch, followed by an inspiring walk around the event area. Here are some impressions (subtitles available):

I think it’s a good way for applicants to get to know Daimler a bit – and vice versa. At a professional level, these car talks have certainly created some major connections: So far, 25 participants received new job offers - 14 of them right the very same day, nearly while still in the passenger seat. More interviews are still being held. And I am very pleased that Molka will also be joining Daimler shortly. So this recruiting day might well be the beginning of long-lasting relationships with our company.

All that goes to show: I’m not alone in my opinion that today is one of the most exciting times ever to get into the automotive industry. And it’s not just mobility, our products and our culture are changing. In the same manner, the way in which we get in contact with new talent is also changing fast. Last year, for instance, I had messenger-chats with future apprentices. Above and beyond all that, we also do regular events such as our hackathons and many more.

I think the idea that our future developers physically get in touch with our products from their very first few minutes at Mercedes really makes a lot of sense. After all, our products and technology remain the most convincing and fascinating arguments for starting a career at Mercedes. And that’s apart from the fact that I would have had nothing against a little bit of air conditioning, let alone massaging seats, during my own application interviews some 40 years ago …

A strong concept and a great event put together by our RD and HR colleagues and many thanks to all of the applicants! I might add that this kind of high potential ride sharing definitely has high potential at Mercedes.