Google Uses Workday, Too… But Not To Torture Job Applicants With It

Date: December 11, 2025
Author: Michael Evans, JD, MBA

Google only uses one page for its 2–3 million job applications it receives each year.¹ Meanwhile, your slow, multipage Workday application screams, “We aren’t very smart,” or worse, “We don’t care if you apply.” Many of your candidates, like Dwight, will back out the moment they see the Workday logo. (See photo.)

If the busiest talent funnel in the world has a simple, short 1-page application, why is your current Workday process so long and complicated?

It doesn’t have to be.

Here are 5 viable solutions…and you don’t have to ditch Workday; nor continue torturing your candidates, nor allow your company’s pipeline and reputation to be destroyed.

First, Walk in Their Shoes

Start by applying to any role at your company through your Workday portal. Remember, this is your “front door” and the first impression you give. I’m sure you’ll “love” it.

Then go apply for a role at Google.

Your notorious Workday application—or obstacle course—is what you are doing to tens, maybe hundreds of job applicants every day who are (or were) genuinely interested in your company. Multiply that by 500 (how many applications one person might complete), and you will begin to understand how requiring job applicants to fill out 5+ pages of mindless, repetitive questions—questions with answers that rarely change (i.e. name, address, race, gender, veteran status, citizenship, etc), might break them. The experience is so bad that extensions like Simplify.jobs were invented as a shortcut.² Other articles by Notalabel_4566 on Quora and Jerry Lee on LinkedIn have covered this.

Forcing top talent to endure this unnecessary and inefficient process is more than just annoying. You are losing credibility, killing your pipeline, and leaking talent. Here is what your Workday application says about you, and your company:

• “We are unoriginal and do things because everyone else does them.”
• “We are inefficient. We waste our time and don’t value yours.”
• “If you work here, everything is going to be this hard, and this slow.”

Now, if anyone would understand this problem…it’s YOU!

You are a trained, educated professional in recruiting or human resources. You didn’t study human behavior and workplace culture dynamics just to let some outside computer program make a bad first impression! You worked hard on that job description, and posting isn’t cheap, as my friend Gaby in HR knows.

Google gets it. They make it quick, easy, and painless. They don’t punish a job applicant by asking you to retype their entire resume (that you just uploaded) into form fields. They are communicating to the job applicant they:

• are smart, fast, and efficient; and
• value the job applicant and their time; and
• are a good place to work.

If the busiest human resources department in the world has figured out a better system for millions of applicants – then what are you doing? Let’s use degrees, and those well-compensated, internal IT staff (or a consultant) to take advantage of available tools that will patch your talent leak. I’m sure even my two coding-minded college buddies Kris and Steve could figure this out.

How Bad Is It, Really?

First, you should never be asking that question. Second, the numbers are ugly:

• 60% of job seekers quit in the middle of online applications because the process is too long or complex (SHRM / CareerBuilder).³
• 8% of people who click “Apply” actually finish—92% drop-off.⁴
• 70% of candidates will not submit an application if it takes more than 15 minutes to complete.⁵

You aren’t filtering for “committed” candidates. You’re filtering for people who are unusually tolerant of bureaucracy. Workday-style flows can lead to dramatically fewer completed applications for employers using them.

Sorry…Workday Isn’t The “Bad Guy”

To solve any problem, you need to understand it. It sure would be easier if we could all blame Workday. Maybe a supervisor or legal once told you, “Workday is a necessary evil,” and left it at that. They’re half-right.

The priority of Workday is not hiring or recruitment—it’s Tenant Isolation. For legal and security reasons, Workday ensures that Company A can never see Company B’s data. Because there is no “Shared Identity Framework,” the candidate is treated like a stranger at every single house.

Google actually uses Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) to manage its massive workforce.⁷ But, unlike most companies, they refuse to let Workday control or interfere with their applicant experience. They built a custom one-page “Front Door” Google Careers. It collects the data and then feeds it into Workday via an API. Yes, the same Workday you are using. Google understands what Workday really is—a database, not a consumer experience.

You don’t have to ditch Workday. You just need to stop using a “back-office” compliance tool as your “front office” receptionist.

The Workday “Helpers” For You

Don’t get rid of Workday, just stop using it as your public face. If you can’t build a custom careers site like Google, you can still put a smarter layer between candidates and the back-office native Workday candidate application interface. “Talent experience platforms” or “experience layers” help you do just that. The below examples directly integrate with Workday recruiting:

• Option A) Phenom: Workday Marketplace lists Phenom Career Sites as certified to integrate with Workday Recruiting to provide an AI-powered, personalized candidate experience.⁸
• Option B) Eightfold.ai: Eightfold positions itself as a talent-intelligence layer that augments Workday; integrating the two lets employers improve candidate experience and time-to-fill while using Workday as the system of record.⁹
• Option C) Beamery: Beamery offers certified, API-based integrations with Workday Skills Cloud and Workday Recruiting, acting as a CRM and experience layer on top of the ATS.¹⁰

You get to keep Workday’s strengths—security, analytics, unified HCM—and avoid all the collateral damage. On the front end, candidates see a branded, modern, mobile-friendly site with a short, smart form. In the middle, they upload a résumé and answer 2–3 tailored questions—questions that actually matter to you! In the back end, the “experience platform” maps and pushes that data into Workday for your recruiters, HR, and compliance teams. My brother, and Oracle alum Pat, is an expert on software integration.

In lieu of these “helpers”, you can also make better use of the integrations that Workday has with LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter (or “Option D“). To do this effectively, you will need to start writing better job descriptions (but that’s the topic of another article).

The Permanent Workday Fix: CCI

Workday, listen up. Your native Workday job application interface is very back-office and in need of an extreme makeover, regardless. There is no technical reason candidates should re-type that information hundreds of times.

Here is a permanent fix that would benefit both employees and employers. As the single most widely used ATS among Fortune 500 companies for talent acquisition—over 39% usage—this is a unique opportunity only you (Workday) can pull off.⁶

Step #1: One portable, privacy-controlled candidate identity (CCI).
Candidates are enabled to create and maintain one centralized, secure profile in Workday under strong consent and privacy controls. This would include all the stuff nobody wants to keep retyping: name, address, phone, email, race, gender, disability, veteran status, citizenship, etc. Resume data would be optional. This Master CCI Profile could make use of existing identity verification tools (OAuth, etc), and is “stateless”—existing above the individual employer tenants. This structure maintains the strict security protocols Workday is famous for—Employer A still cannot see Employer B’s data—but it removes the friction of the front-end user experience. The candidate is empowered to carry and use their single Workday profile across an endless amount corporations they interact with worldwide. The technology (OAuth, APIs, Identity Management) already exists. The only missing variable is the decision to lead the market.

Step #2: Tenants pull candidate data via API.
Each employer’s Workday tenant pulls all the verified candidate profile data that rarely changes through a consent-driven identity layer. When a candidate applies to your company, your Workday tenant simply “calls” the CCI API. These never have to be re-typed—like…ever (with emphasis like TS).

Step #3: Employers keep and maintain their own role-specific questions.
You still add knockout questions, a short “why this role?” answer, portfolio links, and so on.

Oh, and the best part…the components to achieve this permanent fix already exist:

• Identity providers and ATS APIs; and
• Workday-certified integrations and experience platforms that already sit on top of Workday.^{8 9 10}

What’s missing is your decision to improve and adapt. Think Kodak, Xerox, and Blockbuster Video…(cue ominous music).

Summary

Since you can’t wait for Workday, here is a quick summary of what we discussed above. You are going to take back control of your company, its reputation, and your pipeline. Stop deferring these things to an outside company and use your degrees, your training, and your instincts—or hire a consultant. If anyone pushes back with, “everyone uses Workday,” remember two things:

1. Really, is that how low our standards are now…? and
2. You’re not busier than Google’s HR team. So why is your Workday application longer and slower?

A Workday application says: “We haven’t thought about you at all.” As a recruiting or HR professional, you’re better than this!

A short, branded, résumé-first application says: “We are modern. We move quickly. We respect your time.” Creating efficiency and standardization allows the applicant to focus more of their time on thoughtful answers to real questions, reducing burnout responses. Wouldn’t you rather receive more completed applications and answers to unique and important questions from your candidates? Could that ultimately mean a better hire for you and your company? Could that also mean reduced turnover?

1. BEST: Build a custom fast-apply front door. Create a short, branded form on your careers site that asks 2—4 critical questions (max), and allows candidates to upload a resume. Then push that data into Workday behind the scenes.
2. GREAT: Use a Workday “helper” (talent experience platforms or experience layers) that asks 2—4 critical questions (max), and allows candidates to upload a resume. Then push that data into Workday behind the scenes.
3. GOOD: Use LinkedIn “Apply Now” or Indeed “Quick Apply”, ask 2—4 critical questions (max), then push that data into Workday behind the scenes.

If Google can keep its applicant experience easy and simple through millions of applications, you can absolutely do better! The technology already exists. What’s missing is your action and decision.

© and TM – 2025 Michael Evans. All Rights Reserved.

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