New software makes it easy to find out who in the company knows what
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By SPENCER E. ANTE CONNECT
At some companies, it’s become a lot easier to figure out which employees know what.
Traditionally, companies have struggled to sift among hundreds or thousands of employees, identifying which ones have specific skills, or which ones might be ideal for prospective teams.
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Now there are apps and other social-media tools that help facilitate better matchmaking.
In April, for instance, International Business Machines Corp. IBM +0.97% rolled out a new tool to its 400,000 workers called the IBM Expertise Mobile App. Sanders Slavens, a director at IBM Lab Services who runs a group that installs technology systems, used to reach into his Rolodex or the company employee directory, known as the blue pages, to look up co-workers and build a team.
But recently, on behalf of a telecommunications customer, he used the app to find an engineer with expertise in a relatively rare database tool.
The expertise app scours public sources of information such as blogs, message boards and online presentations, in addition to the company’s internal profile database. That is an advantage since co-workers sometimes forget to update their profiles, says Mr. Slavens.
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IBM
IBM’s own app tracks in-house experts.
After launching the app, Mr. Slavens typed in some keywords related to the technology and the customer. The app found 200 profiles of IBM employees who fit the bill. He and one of his managers whittled the list down to three people they had connections with from past projects.
"This has really enhanced our capability," he says. "They were people we had not worked with in a while." Now, Mr. Slavens says he makes the tool part of a standard talent-search process.
Earlier this year, Australia’s Westpac Banking Corp. WBK +0.44% began a pilot using a new mobile app from LinkedIn Corp. LNKD -1.11% called CheckIn. The tool was designed to simplify how recruiters collect and manage graduate applications at careers fairs. But Westpac is using it to identify existing employees for new jobs within the company.
The bank has tested the software at internal events such as employee benefit seminars, during which workers are encouraged to use the app to check in and identify areas of interest for their career. After the event, recruiters can log into LinkedIn, where the attendee list is stored, to screen it for employees who may fit with new jobs in related areas. The CheckIn app became available to all LinkedIn customers at the end of July.
Indian technology-services firm Tech Mahindra Ltd. has formed talent-management teams within each of its business units that help it staff projects from workers spread around the world.
Managers send the teams requests for workers with specific skills. The teams then tap an internal database of employee profiles that includes performance reviews, reprimands and notes on how workers handled tasks on their jobs. The team typically lines up a handful of candidates that managers get to pick from.
Tech Mahindra also posts job openings on its "buddy channel" blog network that advertises openings inside the company and lets workers send the jobs to outsiders. It offers cash payouts to employees for up to five hires they recruit through the channel.
"The dependence on social media is only increasing," says C.P. Gurnani, Tech Mahindra’s chief executive.
Mr. Ante is a senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal in New York. He can be reached at spencer.ante@wsj.com .
via The Best Technology for Identifying In-House Experts – WSJ.com.
