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Online Recruitment Leader Chooses Workday HCM

CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job site with more than 22 million unique visitors each month and a database of 1.5 million jobs. Headquartered in Chicago, CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 1,100 partners, including 150 newspapers and leading portals such as America Online and MSN. More than 300,000 employers take advantage of CareerBuilder.com’s easy job postings, 23 million resumes, Diversity Channel, and more.

After a period of rapid global growth, CareerBuilder.com needed to replace its human resource management system (HRMS). The company selected Workday Human Capital Management for its agility, global capabilities and fresh, modern interface. With Workday, CareerBuilder.com is streamlining HR communications, transforming HR into a consultative partner for the business and responding more quickly to changes in the company and industry.

On-premise solution couldn’t keep up with global growth

Already the leading online recruiting provider in the U.S., CareerBuilder.com wants to be number one in the world. That means sustaining its explosive headcount growth rate of 400 percent and dealing with the challenge of managing an ever-expanding global workforce.

“Since I started here five years ago, we’ve grown from 450 employees to more than 2,500, and from four HR staff to 37,” says Michelle Kossack, HR Operations Manager for CareerBuilder.com. “We’ve also added new HR programs such as learning and development. This growth created an urgent need for change—especially in our HR systems.”

CareerBuilder.com soon outgrew its ADP Employease HR solution, which lacked adequate reporting functionality and multi-currency capabilities. Seeking to implement a solution that would integrate with its ADP PCPW payroll system and support global growth, CareerBuilder.com evaluated close to 10 HR systems before settling on Workday Human Capital Management.

“Workday absolutely blew away the competition,” says Kossack. “It delivers the usability, flexibility and agility we were looking for. We like the fact that the Workday leadership has leveraged its deep HRMS experience to build a next-generation platform from scratch. It was also great to find a vendor that shares our corporate culture of passion and innovation.”

Workday's intuitive interface needs little explanation

In contrast to the one-year implementations common with traditional ERP vendors, CareerBuilder.com will go live on Workday in less than half that time-even with a global deployment. Working in partnership with Collaborative Solutions, a leading provider of management and IT consulting services, helped to speed the integrations and to get CareerBuilder.com up and running quickly. And because Workday features an intuitive interface, training requirements have been minimal.

“Training for other systems typically focuses on navigation,” says Kossack. “But that's unnecessary with Workday because every time you need to conduct a business process, you just search for the process name. Our Workday project team has been inspirational to work with, and extremely helpful in our implementation.”

Timely reports will help managers improve performance, reduce turnover

At CareerBuilder.com, communication between HR and managers used to revolve around back-and-forth email requiring large amounts of data entry. Now this communication will take place within the Workday system, saving an enormous amount of time for HR staff and enabling managers to find the information they need on their own. Using Workday, all users from IT to executive management can view HR transactions, helping them keep up with a growing workforce.

“By using Workday to streamline communication, we'll free up time for HR to train our workforce and implement programs that increase employee engagement,” says Kossack. “We love how Workday gives us the ability to track changes in progress. For example, an HR generalist will be able to see whether a coordinator has sent out an offer letter to a new hire.”

Workday also helps CareerBuilder.com's HR staff provide managers with timely HR information. A detailed turnover report will let managers track the sources of high-quality hires, and a performance evaluation tool will help them identify the causes of good and bad performance.

“With Workday, we're transforming our HR department into a consultative partner for our business,” says Kossack. “We'll be able to report on everything in real time and give managers direct access to this information. From there, it will be easier for HR to assist managers in making strategic personnel decisions.”

In a high-growth environment, flexibility is key For CareerBuilder.com, continued global expansion will mean ongoing changes in the business. Workday will help the company's HR department respond efficiently.

“Having a system that adapts to your business-a system that's working for you rather than the other way round-is critical,” says Kossack. “I would never want to tell an executive that we can't run a report or reorganize a department because our system won't let us. Workday gives us the agility to change rapidly, and makes upgrades a constant process. Our technology department is head-over-heels for Workday's functionality and platform. They have a huge crush on Workday! We believe this solution is far superior to anything else on the market.”