Can Workday Displace LinkedIn as a Recruiting Tool?

In today’s economic climate, a company’s success often depends on its ability to recruit the best person for each position. The internet has made this simpler and more complicated than ever before. Companies have the luxury of being able to choose only the very best from pools of thousands of candidates. At the same time, sifting through mountains of online data to locate the very best candidate causes several logistical problems that decrease efficiency and cost money.

These logistical problems have led to the rise and success of online companies like LinkedIn, a social media site connecting workers in all industries. LinkedIn has become one of the most popular and well respected online services for recruiting purposes. There are many online resources for recruiters, in a wide variety of niches. BuzzRecruiter, for example, offers consulting and web design advice to recruiting companies improve their online presence.

In the spirit of innovation found so often on the internet, a new company is looking to surpass LinkedIn as the most useful recruiting service. Workday is a young company in the business of Human Resources and Finance Management through online applications in the cloud. It is swiftly growing and surprising industry observers with its success. With the acquisition of big data company Identified, Workday’s Human Resources division took a giant leap forward. The new software package called Workday Recruiting was long anticipated by companies and businesses looking for effective recruiting tools, and it appears ready to meet expectations.

Workday’s success in HR management is largely due to its use of big data. The company collects publicly available information on potential employees and organizes it for easy searching by companies looking to hire. Information such as education, job history, location, and Facebook profiles is used to create complex pictures of candidates and allow recruiters to search by any number of criteria.

While LinkedIn allows its users to include personal information such as job history, past residences, educational history, and job skills, it relies largely upon networking for its success. Users find employers or employees based on their mutual acquaintances and shared experiences. Workday Recruiting has used many of the same principles as LinkedIn, but made them much more effective for recruiters. BuzzRecruiter, while not a rival of either of these companies, emphasizes the importance of web design with all of its clients, including recruiters.

Workday and LinkedIn are not true competitors either; one of the founders of Workday, Aneel Bhusri, was an early investor in LinkedIn and is on good terms with the company’s founder Reid Hoffman. Nevertheless, Workday Recruiting is without a doubt an attempt to improve on and perfect the recruiting tools of LinkedIn and similar online companies in the recruiting world. By storing a huge database of profiles and using a unique algorithm to rate and categorize potential employees, the Workday Recruiting module allows recruiters to more accurately choose ideal candidates for their open positions.

Workday Recruiting is a clean and sleek application suite, with an organized interface allowing for easy and fast navigation. All steps in the recruiting process can be monitored in Workday Recruiting, and profiles of specific candidates can be managed from the same platform. This is perhaps Workday’s greatest achievement: developing one platform that supports all recruiting needs.

Employers can search for workers by any number of criteria, and Workday provides a complete profile for potential employees. By pulling information and candidates from not only LinkedIn but also Facebook, Google searches, and other social media and search engine sites, Workday offers recruiters a wider applicant pool. LinkedIn is great for certain industries and is popular among college graduates and white collar workers, but is not used as often by blue collar job seekers. By including Facebook, for example, Workday is reaching people of every background and culture, no matter their job or educational history.

It may seem counterintuitive to reduce exclusivity to find more qualified candidates, but by reaching out to a wider pool, recruiters are more likely to find the perfect candidate in an unlikely place. While some may lack a college degree, they are still the best candidates for a specific job due to their incredible talent with coding and computer programming. The best talents in the business are often passed over because they don’t fit traditional categories or definitions; Workday Recruiting is changing that.

One other way Workday differs from LinkedIn is by targeting younger applicants. There is a wealth of talent in recent college graduates, yet much of it is wasted simply because recruiters are reluctant to hire workers with little job experience. Workday focuses on these younger candidates, providing more specialized talent to recruiters anxious for new life in their companies.

To learn more about Workday and how it is changing the face of recruiting, explore their website and services. For additional design solutions and advice related to talent acquisition, contact BuzzRecruiter today. You can also connect with us on Facebook or Twitter for regular tips on how to improve your recruiting efforts.