Workday sucks. Here's how they can actually make it great.
What do job seekers hate about Workday?
While the list is long, here are the top grievances that I can surmise:
Account creation. Why does someone have to create a unique account for a unique Workday instance operated by or for a single company for which they may never work?
The structured profile. Why do candidates have to create a profile that includes everything that was in the resume?
Don’t tell me it makes resumes more easily searchable. Have you used tools like the Elephas app? On your own computer, you can create a “brain” consisting of whatever digital knowledge you have - on your local drive, in the cloud, or around the web - and interrogate it using the AI of your choice.
- Poor resume parsing. The system tries (but does it, really?) to parse your resume so that it can insert your experience into its profile database, but it just sucks at its job and should be fired.
So, Workday, if you insist on continuing to support your subpar ATS, how about we help you solve these problems and create a new revenue stream?
Do I have your attention now?
That’s what I thought.
1. Create a centralized applicant profile system
Tired: Creating a new Workday profile for every company.
Wired: Creating a single Workday profile for use across all Workday ATS instances.
The quantity and quality of applicants will undoubtedly go up if all an applicant has to do is SSO into a centralized Workday platform and have it post a structured profile to a Workday customer instance for a specific role.
I’m not suggesting auto-submission, but removing a critical, time-consuming step. Applicants must still respond to any questions required by the employer before final submission, but you’ve just cut the application time by 90%.
2. Your work is done (If you want it to be.)
Really, that’s all you have to do to improve the experience by several orders of magnitude. But if you’d like to make it the platform that applicants and recruiters actually enjoy using, you could also:
Improve the resume parser or;
Completely remove the resume parser and the structured profile
Sure, companies are generally trying to use AI to remove human beings from their payroll, and we despise it for that reason. But why not use AI to everyone’s advantage?
How about this approach:
Ditch the structured profile.
After an application is completed, put all resumes submitted to [Company] in a single bucket. (All Applicants)
Tag resumes that were submitted for a specific position. (Job ID, Title, whatever)
Allow recruiters to interrogate resumes submitted for a specific position, for a group of positions, or the entire pool of resumes using AI prompts created just for their preferences or goals.
I’m not suggesting that you remove the standard timestamped queue, nor do I suggest to completey remove all structured profile data – there will just be less of it.
You can even ask current employees to put their resumes in the pool, in case a company is looking to hire from within.
Expected Responses
Workday: “But John, reasons…”
Any reasons you may have for NOT doing it are evil. (I’m joking. Sort of.)
But here are some reasons that come to mind:
- “But the cost…”
Yes, everything has a cost, but treat it like an investment for which you’ll see a signinficant return, either in immediate quid pro quo dollars for the new features, or in new customer accounts because the experience is so good for applicants and recruiters that both want to use it.
- “Who’s going to pay us for this?”
Possibly everyone who interacts with your crappy software. I’ll talk about incremental monetization options later.
- “But it doesn’t fit our current model.”
Change your model. It’s a proven fact that lasting companies change with the expectations of the market.
Does Intel still only make DRAM? Does IBM still make punch card machines? Have you seen the demand for horse-drawn carriages these days?
- “We don’t want the liability of managing personally identifiable information.”
There are ways of using PII without actually storing it on your net. Tokenized PII using Very Good Security is one. There are others.
- “The application process is a qualifying hurdle. We need people to really want the job.”
That’s just…evil. How are companies geting the best candidates if the best candidates decide they don’t want to deal with your shitty software? 👋🏻
“Fine, we’ll consider it. What’s in it for us?”
For the moment, consider that your company is now an airline. And what do airlines do?
They advertise cheap seats that typically result in a horrible travel experience and hope to generate cash by relieving some of the pain of that experience.
Travelers pay incremental baggage fees, fees for more leg room, or fees to upgrade to “Economy Plus” or whatever bullsh*t seems less painful.
In your case, most companies use your ATS because it integrates with other components of your platform, quality be damned.
You make and sell the cheap seats, but you don’t offer an upgrade.
It’s time to offer an upgrade.
As a jobseeker, would I pay $xx per month during a job search so that I could apply to more jobs for which I’m eminently qualified?
You bet your ass I would.
Congratulations! You just created your own version of Economy Plus.
And your existing customers? The companies that pay your licensing fees?
AI is expensive to operate. Everyone knows this. Now is the time to use that as a means to create a premium product.
“Hello, customer. Would you like your in-house recruiters to fill more positions with better candidates? We’ve got a solution for you that uses AI. Oh, you think it’s too expensive? Well, AI is expensive. Don’t worry - you can continue using the crappy ATS as it is.”
That’s the pitch. Nothing more needs to be said.
Ok, maybe a little more should be said. You actually have to deliver a faster, more efficient process with better outcomes for all stakeholders.
You can do that, right?
It’s time for you to be more product-led and less sales-led. Yes, sales are important. But so is quality and craftmanship.
