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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-06-26
Steps: Set Up Semantic Search for Find Jobs

Steps: Set Up Semantic Search for Find Jobs

Security:
Tenant Configuration
 domain in the System functional area.
You can use
Semantic Search for Find Jobs
 to transition your career sites and internal search components from keyword matching to intent-based semantic matching. This feature allows applicants and internal workers to surface relevant roles based on user intent, even when exact titles are not matched. Enabling this feature builds a search index from your active job requisitions at runtime without requiring historical data or manual model training.
To enable this functionality, your tenant must have been migrated to Workday's new search service. For more information on Workday's new search service, see the Enhancements to Workday Search in the
Related Links
section. You must opt in to Enterprise Search innovation services.
  1. To activate semantic search, opt in to the Enterprise Search innovation services.
  2. On the
    Innovation Services and Data Selection Opt-In
     task, select the
    Enterprise Search
    check box in the
    Cross Applications Services
     category.
  3. Click
    OK
    .
  4. Access the
    Maintain AI Innovation Features
     task.
  5. Select the
    Semantic Search for Job Report
     check box.
    1. Security:
      Tenant Configuration
       domain in the System functional area.
  6. Click
    OK
    , then click
    Done
    .
  7. Access the
    Edit Recruiting Settings
     task.
  8. Configure semantic parameters for search extraction. Navigate to the Job Search Configuration section. Select the Semantic Search for Career Sites and Internal Job Reports check box.
  9. Click OK.
  10. (Optional) Access the
    Run On-Demand Machine Learning Activation
     for Implementation Tenant task.
    1. Execute this task only in implementation tenants. This task manually triggers the machine learning infrastructure to activate search indexing outside of production environments.
    2. Security:
      Tenant Configuration
       domain in the System functional area.
Workday builds a search index from your active job requisitions. The feature becomes available on your internal reports and external career sites within 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the number of active job requisitions in your tenant.
You can access the
Find Jobs
 report as a test worker or navigate to an external career site to verify retrieval accuracy. Enter conceptual search phrases or synonyms (such as searching for Developer when positions are titled Software Engineer) to confirm that the text embedding model successfully retrieves semantically related jobs.
You can access the
Find Jobs
 report or an external career site to verify that the search successfully returns jobs based on user intent. Use conceptual phrases or synonyms rather than exact job titles such as Developer when positions are titled Software Engineers to test the feature.