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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2024-03-08
Setup Considerations: Skills in Recruiting

Setup Considerations: Skills in Recruiting

You can use this topic to make decisions when planning to use skills in Recruiting. The topic explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How they fit into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are Is

Workday offers a variety of ways to add, maintain, and select skills for:
  • Job Requisitions
  • Job Applications
  • Prospect Profiles
  • Candidate Profiles
Prospects and candidates can identify their skills that match your job requirements, and you can search for candidates with the most relevant skills.
This topic explains the differences between configuration options for skills, enabling you to make an informed decision about using skills for Recruiting.
Workday Solution
Description
Machine Learning for Recruiting
Workday uses a machine learning algorithm and integration with Skills Cloud to suggest skills based on similar worker profiles and job requisition data. Recruiters can select required or optional skills for job requisitions. Candidates can select suggested skills when applying to a job. Prospects can select suggested skills on the
Prospect Introduce Yourself
form.
Skills Cloud
The Skills Cloud is a library of skills. Prospects, candidates, and recruiters can add these skills during the recruitment process. You can also use Skills Cloud to build qualification requirements.
Crowdsourced Skills
If a skill isn't available in your tenant, prospects and candidates can create crowdsourced skills to add to their profiles. See:Concept: Crowdsourced Skills and Experience Management.
Maintained Skills
You can maintain a list of skills specific to your organization that recruiting administrators, prospects, and candidates can add to profiles.

Business Benefits

You can streamline the process of working with skills using any combination of solutions, which:
  • Use machine learning intelligence to adapt skills suggestions over time and improve efficiency and accuracy.
  • Improve identification of candidates based on the relevant skills that they select.
  • Enable prospects and candidates to select and create skills for better job matches.
  • Maintain skills data, including skills specific to your company, for roles specific to your company.

Use Cases

Solution
Use Case
Machine Learning for Recruiting
Candidates can review and accept suggested skills as the best matches when they apply for a job. Prospects can select suggested skills after they upload their resume on the
Prospect Introduce Yourself
form.
When creating a job requisition, you can review and accept suggested skills as required or optional for the job requisition.
Skills Cloud
Prospects and candidates can access a library of skills to add to their profiles.
You can convert crowdsourced and maintained skills to Skills Cloud skills. You can also view reports based on selected skills.
Crowdsourced Skills
You can increase the number of skills for prospects and candidates to add to their profiles without using Skills Cloud.
Maintained Skills
You can create a categorized list of specialized and proprietary skills for your company.

Questions to Consider

When setting up machine learning for job requisitions and suggested skills in Recruiting, consider:
Questions
Considerations
How do you want to manage machine learning for Recruiting?
Machine learning automates the process of managing skills, but you can delete suggested skills from job requisitions.
Does machine learning consider more than the
Skills
section of a resume to suggest skills for job applicants?
Machine learning uses logic to consider matches from the entire uploaded resume, not just the
Skills
section, including:
  • Certificates
  • Company
  • Degree
  • Description
  • Education
  • Experience
  • Honors
  • Major and minor
  • Objective
  • Publication
  • Skills
  • Summary
When setting up Skills Cloud for Recruiting, consider:
Question
Considerations
Where does Skills Cloud get its data?
Skills Cloud gets its data from:
  • Public data sets.
  • Purchased data sets.
How do I get skills onto a prospect, candidate, and job requisition?
Convert maintained skills to Skills Cloud skills on prospect and candidate profiles. Workday automatically converts duplicate maintained skills to Skills Cloud skills if they're an exact text match.
You can also use web services to load Skills Cloud skills by reference ID or an exact text match. If there's no exact text match and no reference ID, Workday creates a:
  • Crowdsourced skill for candidates.
  • Maintained skill for the
    Qualifications
    tab on job requisitions.
How does automated skill management work and how does it impact skills on candidates?
Workday Skills Cloud performs regular automated background processes to clean up duplicate and synonymous skills in your tenant.
Workday always retains the skill string that a candidate enters, even if that skill gets added as a synonym or canonical skill to the Skills Cloud.
When managing crowdsourced skills, consider:
Question
Considerations
How do you want candidates to submit crowdsourced skills?
External candidates can add skills on their job application, which become part of their candidate profile. You can view crowdsourced skills on the
Find Skill
report.
Can you view crowdsourced skills in the
Maintain Skills
report?
Crowdsourced skills don't display in this report.
When managing maintained skills, consider:
Question
Considerations
Do you need Skills Cloud to use maintained skills?
Maintained skills don't require Skills Cloud, but if you enable Skills Cloud, you can convert maintained skills into Skills Cloud skills.
How do you manage maintained skills?
For maintained skills, you can:
  • Add skills, find duplicate skills, and manage translations.
  • Merge duplicate skills.
  • Create categories for skills.
How do you want to search for candidates by maintained skill?
Use the
Find Candidates
report if you haven't converted the skills to Skills Cloud skills.

Recommendations

No impact.

Requirements

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
Understand how Workday implements machine learning when you:

Limitations

  • You can't disable Skills Cloud skills once you enable it.
  • Reports don't differentiate between suggested skills and skills selected by prospects or candidates.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Configure these security domains in the Recruiting functional area:
Domains
Considerations
Staffing Actions: Job Requisition Qualifications
Controls the visibility of suggested skills on job requisitions.
Set Up: Skills and Experience
Enable the Workday Skills Cloud.
Self-Service: Candidate
Enables candidates to enter crowdsourced skills.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

You can manage skills with these reports:
Reports
Considerations
Find Candidates
Filter candidates by Skills Cloud skills and maintained skills.
Find Skill
Workday stores crowdsourced data in this report.
Maintain Skills
Add, search for, and edit maintained skills. You can also hide skills from candidates and flag skills as inactive.

Integrations

These web services support skills in Recruiting:
Solution
Web Services
Machine learning for job requisitions
  • Evergreen Requisition
  • Job Requisition
Machine learning for suggested skills
  • Tenant Setup – HCM
Skills Cloud skills
  • Candidates
  • Evergreen Requisition
  • Job Profile
  • Job Requisition
  • Manage Skills
  • Position
  • Position Restrictions
  • Recruiting Agency Candidate
  • Skill Profile

Connections and Touchpoints

Skills in Recruiting interact with Talent features in Workday. You can search for workers by skill. You and workers can also select skills to include in their worker profiles.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.