School of Information Sciences

Meza receives SLA's Impact Award

[image1-right]Ozzie Meza (MS ’05) has received the Impact Award from the Business & Finance Division of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). Meza received the award in recognition of his efforts to create and implement a method of using knowledge management to improve recruitment of executives at Allstate Insurance. Meza’s system was successfully expanded to other levels of recruitment at the company, and he now leads a knowledge management team at Allstate’s Human Resources Information Center.

Meza discussed his work in a recent interview for Wolpher Information Services’s Insight & Outlook blog:

You didn’t start out in the HR team, tell us a little bit about how you ended up where you are.

I graduated in 2005 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and my first role was in industry-wide executive recruitment. I didn’t see myself as a human resources professional, I saw myself as a recruiting professional, and I’ve always been considered first and foremost a librarian and information specialist. Since talent acquisition lives within the Human Resources department at Allstate, I found myself fitting in as an HR professional because that’s where the department lives within the broad organizational structure.

How has having a department-specific information center been helpful?

Historically, most companies have an enterprise-wide information center rather than a department-specific information center. The benefit of a department-specific information center is that in the world of human resources, many decisions can be based on intuition. But now that there is so much information out there, the importance of data-driven decision making has become more crucial. Knowing how the industry shifts and changes helps us make the best HR decisions.

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