How to Fill Out a Workday Job Application
Workday is everywhere. Amazon, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Nike, Walmart, Target, and thousands of other companies use it as their applicant tracking system.
It's also, famously, a pain to use.
The forms are long. The interface is slow. Every company that uses Workday seems to have configured it differently, so you can never quite predict what you'll encounter. And after the third time you've typed your entire work history into a form that already has your resume, it's hard not to wonder why you're doing this.
Here's what you need to know to get through Workday applications faster and with fewer mistakes.
Why Workday asks you to enter information from your resume manually
This is the question that annoys everyone. You upload a resume. Then Workday asks you to manually enter your work history anyway.
The reason is that Workday's resume parser — the feature that's supposed to auto-populate fields from your resume — is unreliable. It works well enough on some resumes but badly on others, especially those with creative formatting, columns, or unusual section headers.
Companies know this, so they often require manual entry to ensure the data is clean and searchable in their ATS. Your frustration is valid. It's also the reality you're working with.
Before you start: what to have ready
Opening the application before you're prepared wastes time and increases the chance of errors. Before clicking "Apply":
- Your resume as a PDF
- Start and end dates (month and year) for every job in the last 10 years
- Your GPA if you graduated within the last 5 years
- The names of references, their email addresses, and their relationship to you
- Your LinkedIn URL
- Salary expectations, if you have them ready
The work history section is where most people slow down because they have to look up old dates. Pull that together once, save it somewhere accessible, and you'll move through every Workday application faster.
Step by step: what each section looks like
My Information
This is the straightforward part: name, email, phone, address. Workday may also ask for pronouns, veteran status, and disability status — these are typically voluntary EEO fields and don't affect your application in any ATS-scored way.
My Experience
This is the longest section. Workday breaks your experience into:
- Work Experience — separate entries for each job, with employer name, job title, location, start/end date, and a description field
- Education — degree, school, field of study, graduation date, GPA (optional)
- Skills — a tag-style field where you add individual skills
- Websites/Social Networks — where LinkedIn goes, and optionally GitHub, portfolio, etc.
- Languages — proficiency level for any additional languages
The description field for each work entry is important. Don't leave it blank and don't paste your entire resume bullet list. Write 2–4 bullet points that mirror the language in the job description you're applying for. This content is searchable.
Application Questions
These vary by company. Common types:
- "Why do you want to work at [Company]?" — usually 250–500 word limit
- "Describe a time you [handled conflict / led a project / overcame a challenge]"
- Work authorization: "Are you legally authorized to work in the United States?"
- Salary and start date expectations
The behavioral questions are where most people write the weakest answers. Don't be generic. Use a specific example: name the project, the team, the outcome. A vague answer to "describe a time you handled conflict" is worse than a short, specific one.
Voluntary Self-Identification
EEO questions about race, gender, veteran status, and disability. These are legally required to be offered and legally required to be optional. They have no effect on your application score. Fill them in or select "Prefer not to disclose" — either is fine.
The most common Workday mistakes
Closing the tab mid-application. Workday does autosave, but not reliably across all configurations. Don't close the browser or navigate away without explicitly saving your progress. Look for a "Save for Later" button.
Using creative resume formatting. If Workday's resume parser mis-reads your resume and pre-populates fields incorrectly, it can actually work against you. Paste your resume in plain text or use a clean, single-column PDF to minimize parsing errors.
Leaving the description fields blank. Recruiters search Workday's database by keyword. If you leave the job description fields empty, you don't show up in those searches even after applying.
Answering behavioral questions generically. "I always try to communicate openly" is not an answer to "describe a time you handled conflict on a team." Recruiters are looking for a story, not a trait.
Not checking your application before submitting. Workday shows a review screen before final submission. Use it. Check dates, titles, and the text of your answers. You can't edit after you submit.
How to get through Workday faster
The honest answer is that no trick eliminates the time cost entirely. But a few things help:
Use autofill. Answerly's Workday autofill reads your uploaded resume and maps it to Workday's fields automatically — work history, education, skills, and more. It works within the Workday interface, not in a separate tab. It doesn't replace the judgment calls (behavioral questions, salary expectations), but it eliminates most of the typing.
Save a plain-text version of your work history. A simple doc with your job titles, dates, and 3–4 bullets per role is faster to reference than re-opening your resume PDF every time.
Keep a bank of behavioral question answers. STAR-format stories (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for 5–6 common scenarios. Conflict, leadership, failure, a project you're proud of, a time you influenced without authority. You'll reuse them constantly.
What happens after you submit
Your application lands in Workday's database and is visible to the recruiter or HR team. From there:
- If you applied to a role with a keyword filter, your application is scored against those filters
- A recruiter reviews qualifying applications manually
- You may receive automated status updates ("Application Received," "Under Review," "Position Closed")
The timeline varies widely. Some companies move in days; others sit on applications for weeks. Following up by email or LinkedIn message (to the recruiter if you can find them) is reasonable after 7–10 business days without a status update.
One thing that helps before you apply
Before spending 45 minutes on a Workday application, spend 2 minutes checking whether your resume is a strong match for the role. Answerly's ATS score checker compares your resume to the job description and shows your keyword match rate. If you're at 40% match, tailoring your resume before applying will do more for your chances than a perfectly filled out Workday form.
Apply smarter, not just faster.