How to get through a Workday job application

Workday is the hiring system behind the career sites of many large companies. You can usually spot it from the address, which contains myworkdayjobs.com. The application is longer than most, and it has a few habits that trip people up. None of them are hard once you know what is coming.

Before you start

• Confirm the role is still open on the company's career page. A Workday application takes twenty minutes or more, so do not spend that on a ghost job.
• Have your resume ready as a PDF or Word file. A simple one-column layout parses best.
• Keep your LinkedIn and portfolio links, your dates of employment, and your education dates nearby.
• Use a password manager. You will create a separate account for each company.

Why it asks you to create an account

Each company has its own Workday site, and accounts do not carry over from one company to the next. The account you made for one employer will not sign you in at another. Use the same email everywhere so the confirmations land in one place, and expect a verification email before you can continue.

The steps you will see

1. Start your application. Workday usually offers to autofill from your resume, to apply manually, or to reuse your last application if you have applied to this company before.
2. My Information: name, address, phone, and how you heard about the role.
3. My Experience: work history, education, skills, your resume, and links. This is where autofill needs the most checking.
4. Application Questions: work authorization, sponsorship, relocation, notice period, and anything the company adds.
5. Voluntary Disclosures and Self Identify: optional demographic questions, common in the US.
6. Review and submit.

Fix the autofill before you move on

The resume parser fills in your work history, and it often gets things wrong. It merges two jobs into one, splits one job into two, drops dates, or pastes your whole summary into a job description field. Read every entry on the experience page. A recruiter may look at these fields before your resume file, so they should match it.

The skills field usually expects you to type and pick from a list. Free text that is not on the list will not stick. Add the skills named in the posting that you genuinely have.

Avoid losing your work

• Sessions time out after a period of inactivity. Write long answers in a separate document and paste them in.
• Progress is saved as you move between steps, and an unfinished application can usually be found later from the account's candidate home.
• If a page refuses to continue, scroll up. A required field you missed is flagged at the top of the section, not next to the button.

Answer the screening questions carefully

Questions about work authorization, sponsorship, location, and years of experience are often used to filter applications automatically. Answer them accurately. If you need a visa, read how to find jobs that sponsor visas before you apply widely.

Applying to a second role at the same company

Sign in with the same account. The option to reuse your last application fills most of the form, and you only update what changed. Recruiters can see every role you applied to, so pick the one or two that really fit rather than five at once.

After you submit

You get a confirmation email, and the candidate home shows the status of each application. Statuses are often generic and change slowly. Mark the role applied on your side and keep searching. Many of the companies that hire through Workday post roles you will not find on the big boards. You can find them by title in JobLookout.