Workday Application Status Explained: What Each Label Means

When I was applying to 10 to 20 jobs a day, Workday was one of the systems I dreaded most. Every company wants its own account, the resume parser gets half your work history wrong, and once you’ve submitted, you’re left staring at a one-word status that might not change for a month.

This post is what I wish I’d known about Workday application statuses: where to find them in Workday Candidate Home, and what each label usually means. One warning first: there is no single official meaning for any Workday status label. Each employer configures its own Workday setup, picks which stages exist, and decides what candidates see at each one. Below I’ll cover the labels you’re most likely to see and how they’re usually used, but treat every meaning here as “usually,” not “always.”

Where to find your status in Workday Candidate Home

Workday isn’t one big job board with one login. Each employer has its own Workday site (called a tenant), usually at an address like company.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com. An account you made for one company doesn’t carry over to another. If you applied to eight companies that use Workday, you have eight separate accounts.

To check a status:

1. Go to that company’s careers site and sign in.
2. Open Candidate Home (sometimes shown as a menu or your name in the top corner).
3. Look under My Applications. Applications are split into an Active tab and an Inactive tab, and each row shows the job title, the requisition number, the date you applied and a status.

If you can’t find an application at all, check the other tab, and make sure you’re signed in with the same email you used to apply. Using a different email for one company is an easy way to end up with two accounts on the same tenant.

Common Workday application statuses and what to do

Many employers show candidates only a few broad labels, even though the recruiter sees a lot more detail on their side. For example, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s HR guide shows that a candidate in the Review stage sees “Submitted,” while one in any later active stage (interview, assessment and so on) just sees “In Progress.” So you may not get an “Interview” status even when you’re actually at that stage.

Here are the labels I see most often:

• Application Received / Submitted. A Workday “Application Received” status usually means your application made it into the system and that’s all. It doesn’t mean anyone has opened it. What to do: nothing yet. Save the posting and move on to the next application.
• In Review / Under Consideration / In Progress. Usually means you’re still in the active pool. Some employers set this the moment you apply, others only after a first screen. The University of Washington, for example, uses “In Progress” while HR checks you against the minimum qualifications. What to do: keep applying elsewhere. This is not a signal to stop.
• Interview / Screen / Assessment. When an employer shows this, you’ve been moved to a later stage. You’ll normally get an email or call before or alongside the change. What to do: check your inbox and spam folder for scheduling emails, and re-read the posting you saved.
• Offer. An offer is being prepared or has gone out. Recruiters almost always contact you directly about this. What to do: look for the offer task or document in Candidate Home, and reply to the recruiter.
• Not Selected / No Longer Under Consideration. On Workday, “No Longer Under Consideration” means the employer has closed your application for this role. It can happen at any stage, including before a hiring manager looks at anything. What to do: mark it closed in your own tracker. It only applies to this one requisition, not to other roles at the same company.
• Job Posting Filled / Recruitment Canceled. Either someone was hired or the employer stopped hiring for the role (budget freezes and reorgs happen). It isn’t always a judgment on you. What to do: close it out, and watch for the role to be reposted.
• Withdrawn / Withdrew. You (or occasionally the recruiter on your behalf) pulled the application. What to do: nothing, unless it was a mistake. In that case, contact the recruiter, since you usually can’t undo it yourself.
• Completed. This one confuses people. At some employers, “Completed” on the Inactive tab is just what candidates see for any closed application, whether you were turned down or the requisition was canceled. It rarely means “hired.”

Why your status sits unchanged for weeks

This is the part that drove me up the wall. The honest answer is that a Workday status is only as current as the last person who clicked a button in it.

• Recruiters don’t always move people through stages in the system. A recruiter may screen 200 applications, phone the top ten, and never touch the other 190 until the role closes. Some teams bulk-reject everyone at the end. Some never do.
• Internal steps are hidden. On the employer side, Workday tracks stages and smaller steps inside each stage. Candidates often see only the stage (or less), so plenty of activity can happen without your label changing.
• Frozen requisitions keep their last status. If a hiring freeze pauses the role, your application can just stay where it was.
• The hiring manager is busy. In a lot of setups, HR passes resumes to a hiring manager who reviews them alongside their actual job.

So an unchanged status after three weeks doesn’t mean much in either direction. I stopped reading tea leaves in it and treated it as “no news.”

What “Inactive” means in Workday

The Inactive tab is where applications go once they’re no longer moving forward. That includes rejections, withdrawals, canceled requisitions and, at some companies, filled roles. If an application moved from Active to Inactive and nobody emailed you, that’s usually the rejection. It’s blunt, but it’s at least an answer.

Inactive is not the same thing as your account being inactive. Your profile stays, and you can still apply to other roles at that company.

Does a status change mean a human looked at it?

Not necessarily. A move to “Not Selected” can be triggered by knockout questions (for example, answering “no” to a work authorization or location question), or by a recruiter bulk-closing every remaining application when a role fills. A move to “Interview” almost always involves a person, because someone had to pick you.

I wrote more about what actually filters applications in Does an ATS reject resumes? The short version: the software mostly stores and sorts, and screening questions plus a busy recruiter do most of the cutting.

Should you follow up?

Following up on a Workday application rarely hurts, but it rarely moves a status either. A few things make it worth doing:

• Wait about two weeks after applying, or a week after an interview, before you reach out.
• Message a person, not the portal. Candidate Home usually has no way to message anyone. Find the recruiter or hiring manager on LinkedIn, or reply to any email you got from the company. University and public-sector employers often say HR can’t see hiring decisions, so questions go to the hiring department.
• Include the requisition number (it often looks like REQ-12345 or R0012345) and the exact job title. Big companies have many postings with the same title.
• Keep it short. Two or three sentences: you applied, why you’re a fit in one line, and that you’re happy to talk.

How to withdraw a Workday application

In Candidate Home, find the application under My Applications, open the actions menu next to it (often three dots or a button), and choose Withdraw Application. It moves to the Inactive tab with a status like “Withdrawn.” Not every employer allows it at every stage, and you generally can’t reverse it yourself, so only withdraw when you’re sure. If you’ve already interviewed, a short email to the recruiter is the polite way to do it.

Practical tips for Workday itself

Pick one password approach and stick to it

You’ll make dozens of these accounts. Use a password manager and let it generate and save a password for each tenant, saved under the company’s careers URL. Then you never have to do the password reset dance just to check one status.

Check every field the resume parser filled in

Workday offers to read your resume and fill in your work history and education. It saves time, but it often gets things wrong: job titles merged with company names, dates in the wrong role, bullet points split across two jobs, or a whole job missing. Go through each section before you continue. A recruiter reading a garbled profile won’t know the parser did it.

Add skills one at a time

The skills field is not a free text box. You type a skill, wait for the dropdown, select the match, and repeat. Pasting a comma-separated list usually doesn’t work. Keep a short list of the skills you always add so you aren’t thinking about it every time, and pick the ones the posting actually mentions. If you’re adjusting your resume for each role, the same idea applies there; I covered that in how to tailor your resume to a job description.

Save a copy of the posting

Workday postings disappear once a role closes, and sometimes the requisition link stops working while your application is still active. Save the description as a PDF or paste it into your notes when you apply. If you get an interview call three weeks later, you’ll want to know exactly what they asked for.

Tracking Workday applications across many employers

Since every employer has its own account, there’s no single page that shows all your Workday applications. If you apply widely, you need your own list: company, role, requisition number, date applied, the tenant URL, current status, and the date you last checked. A spreadsheet works. The main thing is updating it every time you check a status, so you don’t have to log in to twelve portals to remember where you stand.

You can also speed up the forms themselves. Workday applications can be autofilled with browser extensions, but whichever one you use, always check the parsed work history and the skills field before you submit. Those are the two places things go wrong most often.

FAQ

What does “In Review” mean on Workday?

“In Review” usually means your application is still in the active pool, but it doesn’t reliably mean a recruiter has seen it. Some employers set “In Review” or “Under Consideration” automatically when you apply, while others only change it after a first screen. Unless you get an email or the status moves to an interview stage, assume nobody has looked yet.

How long does a Workday application stay at “Application Received”?

There’s no set time. It stays there until someone at the company moves your application, which can be days or never. Many applications stay at this status until the role closes, and some stay even after.

Can I reapply after “Not Selected”?

You usually can’t reapply to the same requisition, but you can apply to other roles at the same company, including a new posting for the same job. Some employers have their own waiting periods, so check their careers FAQ. Change something real before you reapply, such as your resume or the role you target.

Why did my application go to Inactive without an email?

Plenty of employers don’t send rejection emails, or send them in batches weeks later. Moving to the Inactive tab usually means the application is closed, either because you weren’t selected, the role was filled, or the requisition was canceled.

Can I edit my Workday application after submitting it?

Generally no. Once submitted, the application is locked. You can update your candidate profile for future applications, but if something important was wrong, contact the recruiter with the requisition number rather than withdrawing and reapplying.