With the gift-giving season in full swing, many of us are using online search to find the right cameras, toys, watches, and other goodies for those near and dear. And in a few weeks it’ll be the New Year, which is expected to bring an upswing in hiring nationwide, and the pressure to find the right people to fill new jobs. Yet why is it so easy—as consumers—to search online for cameras and watches by desired features and functionality, when it’s so difficult—as employers—to search for people in traditional HR systems based on desired talents, experiences, and skills?
The answer to the above question is that many business systems haven’t kept up with innovations and expectations found in consumer technologies. When looking internally to fill an opening or make an organizational change, managers are still likely to rely on “tribal knowledge,” basing decisions on bits and pieces of information about employees that come from conversations, emails, and personnel records.
At Workday, we’ve made it our mission to help customers get smarter about finding the right talent within their organizations. In the Workday 12 release, which all customers upgraded to last week, we introduced Faceted Search. We received a ton of extremely complimentary feedback on Faceted Search, and more broadly Workday 12, from the analysts, customers, and prospects we briefed at the HR Demo and Dreamforce conferences this month. (In fact, Workday won top honors at the HR Demo show!) Just one example is this great tweet from analyst Dennis Howlett following a briefing: “[the] stuff they’re doing reminds me of a swan…lots of action under the surface but elegant on top.”
More specific to Faceted Search was this observation from Steve Boese, an HR technology consultant and instructor, in his Nov. 22 blog, “Workday 12—Working for You”: