Every year, Paige Cole, HR Program Manager at Williams, faces one of the highest-stakes moments in her early career program: matching roughly 60 rotational employees in engineering, business, and IT to their next 12-month assignment. Get it right, and the company builds a stronger bench of future leaders. Get it wrong, and both new hires and hiring leaders feel it immediately.

Before Abode, getting it right meant weeks of manual work, five different forms, and no small amount of anxiety about the data.

The Challenge: A Process Held Together by Spreadsheets

Williams' rotational program brings students in from across the country into three consecutive 12-month rotations, developing them from "knowledge of self and company" in year one all the way to "leading through influence, not title" by their final placement. It's a deliberate, high-touch program — but the matching process behind it was anything but streamlined.

Paige was managing preferences from rotational employees, position needs from leaders, and career and skills data pulled separately from Workday — all through multiple Microsoft Forms and spreadsheets. She then hand-built a 50-plus page PowerPoint, complete with photos and feedback, just to bring everyone into one room for a decision.

"I was absolutely terrified that I was going to lose something, delete something, drop something, or not be able to find it because it was in so many places," Paige recalls.

The cost wasn't just her time. When the manual process broke down — say, five rotational employees all preferencing the same five popular roles — it took multiple rounds of follow-up conversations to sort out, dragging the whole cycle out three to four weeks and leaving both employees and leaders in prolonged limbo. Rushed or unclear placements showed up later as disengagement, particularly among rotational employees heading into their final assignment before graduation.

The Solution: One System, One Source of Truth

Williams had already worked with Abode on recruiting, so the team knew the tool and trusted the partnership. What sold Paige on Abode for matching was simple: a single system that could house leader position descriptions, rotational preferences, and Workday talent card data in one place — with a matching engine and reporting fast enough to keep up.

The standout feature was the yearbook. Rotational employees upload a photo, answer a short survey about their interests and career goals, and their Workday talent card populates automatically — giving leaders a rich, one-stop view instead of a cold-call conversation. Leaders get position descriptions that read like real opportunities rather than a bulleted Excel row, and both sides can set up conversations directly through the platform.

Setup took about two days. Training took thirty minutes. And once preferences were in, running the match took about 90 minutes — down from three to four weeks of manual reconciliation.

The Results

• Time reclaimed: Paige now spends 75–85% less time buried in spreadsheets — and redirects that time into one-on-one conversations with leaders and rotational employees about development, career goals, and skill gaps.
• Faster, cleaner matching: What once took three to four weeks of back-and-forth now runs in about 90 minutes once preferences are collected, with no follow-up conversations required in the most recent cycle.
• Better outcomes, less friction: "Knock on wood, I don't believe we had any tears this last spring when we went through the process," Paige says — a marked change from a manual process that regularly ended in frustrated leaders and disappointed employees.
• Transparency leaders and employees notice: Both groups reported feeling like the process was organized and fair, with visibility into every open role and every candidate's interests up front.
• A durable system, not a one-off fix: Because everything lives in one platform, Williams can now report on which roles were filled, track roles that need to roll into the next cohort, and follow a rotational employee's development history across placements — data that used to disappear into last year's spreadsheet.

Why It Matters

For Paige, the value of Abode isn't just operational efficiency — it's that it frees her up to do the part of the job that actually moves the needle.

"Abode is worth investing in for team matching because it's going to allow you to quickly get through the data and make decisions based off of sound data that's all in one system," she says, "and allow you to spend much more time on the importance of having conversations and building the relationships."