Workday puts Adam Godson in charge of all its talent acquisition products

The trade-off for a Workday customer is one accountable owner in exchange for a product line led by founders from acquired startups. Recruiting used to sit inside a broader talent group alongside performance reviews ^[20]. Now Godson, who calls talent acquisition "one of the largest and fastest growing products at Workday" ^[21], runs Recruiting, HiredScore, Paradox, messaging and candidate engagement ^[3]. He was CEO, president and chief product officer of Paradox, which Workday finished acquiring on 1 October 2025 ^[2]. He named Chief AI Officer Joel Hellermark, founder of Sana, as the other startup founder now running products at the company ^[4].

The sharpest question at the session was about a wrong rejection. A journalist raised a much-circulated account of a man who applied again for his own job using another name, only to be turned down by the AI his own HR team used ^[5]. Godson did not dispute that such failures happen. "There's certainly lots of ways to do it wrong," he said ^[6]. His answer was to point to use cases with clear returns ^[7]. He said 30 customers at Workday's frontline summit had poster boards of results, including time to hire cut from 21 days to three ^[17]. That is a drop of 18 days, or about 86 percent ^[16]. He also cited 7-Eleven, where Paradox says store leaders save about 40,000 hours a week ^[18], and the write-up adds 32 million interviews scheduled by AI last year ^[19].

Those figures measure speed and hours saved. The journalist asked about a wrong rejection. Godson's stated defence is general: "We think that the antidote to that is fit for purpose tools built on the right data" ^[8]. The write-up's section on false rejections does not include an error rate from any customer. In our view the numbers answer a different question, because a process can cut time to hire from 21 days to three and still reject the wrong person.

On who decides, Workday's line is consistent. Godson said the software points out "the fits and the gaps" in each resume ^[9]. Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday's President, Product and Technology, said in his own media session: "Workday does not automate hiring decisions" ^[10]. The Candidate Profile release says the profile does not rank, recommend or reject anyone ^[11]. If that holds, the hiring decision and its record stay with the employer's recruiters. Godson's one piece of advice for employers was to be clear about "how should candidates use or not use AI in their hiring processes" ^[12].

The claim that recruiters "are going to have to really recruit" once agents take over the admin ^[15] depends on the admin going first, and scheduling at 32 million interviews suggests it has begun ^[19]. What is left is harder. Godson called finding candidates who do not tick the boxes "one of the challenges of our time" ^[13] and said recruiting today often starts with "a poorly written job description that came from the compensation department" ^[14].

The evidence supports telling talent leaders to plan for false rejections. On CV poisoning and bias testing, the record shows that reporters raised them ^[1]. A buyer can budget this quarter against the speed figures. Whether wrong rejections fall alongside them is something the buyer will have to measure by next quarter.