jordan spencer

Work(day) is Hell

2024-12-26

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, really. There is no shortage of people complaining about the Workday hiring platform and its barely functioning application process. And yet, it's still heavily in use even as alternative platforms like Bamboo, Lever, and Greenhouse have popped up. Maybe the persistence of Workday is just another example of big business contracts, the impossibility of changing the corporate status quo, lowest common denominator processes, etc. What I've been struggling to understand is how some of these companies manage to find anyone at all. At the very least they must be losing out on tons of potential talent. (Though, of course it must be said in the era of ghost jobs that this is all working on the assumption that these are real openings and they actually want to hire people.)

I recently saw a post on LinkedIn from a recruiter at a big company that uses Workday. She was apparently frustrated about people reaching out to her with questions about job opportunities at the company. She posted something to the effect of "You message me asking about X, I tell you to look at our careers page. You comment on my post asking about Y, I tell you to look at our careers page. You email me to share your resume, I tell you to look at our careers page." At the time their careers page had a few hundred openings posted.

Setting aside how absolutely asinine this sounds coming not just from a recruiter but a recruiter who is actively posting on LinkedIn, this also just struck me as completely out of touch with the realities of the platform she was directing people to. (Also, save this anecdote for when a family member tells you to "go in and turn in your resume in person" - sending a LinkedIn DM or hunting down an HR email is as close as we can actually get to that old move.)

Here's an example of what it's like trying to navigate this platform, in this case the company is a large American bank. At the timeof writing they claimed to have 1,453 openings accepting applications.

No Chronological Order, No Sorting

There first problem, and the one that seems most glaringly obvious to me, is that there is no way to sort chronologically. I think most people would believe, especially when 1,500 positions are involved, that this kind of sorting would be an obvious option. But there's actually no option to sort at all and seemingly no rhyme or reason as to what they you while attempting to browse.

On the first page of openings I was served posts from...

Page 2 offered much less variance but surprisingly had much more recent posts than the preivous page. On page 2 I was served posts from...

So no chronological order, no sorting options, and apparently jobs posted 30+ days ago are in play here. How many? Who knows! You better look at every page because though you might have to scroll past these "posted 30+ days ago" jobs (can we assume they're dead posts?) there could be a brand new post on the next page! But we don't have to scroll through all 1,500 posts - we have filters! So let's see how useful those filters are.

(Trying To) Get Specific

Time Type:

Area of Interest:

Job Family:

More:

Job Type:

These are your options. The problem I have here is that the options with the potential to be most useful, "Area of Interest" and "Job Families," aren't broken into commonly understood categories that a job seeker would recognize but instead are long lists of specific and opaque internal terminology. As someone looking for a software engineering position I can imagine many of these categories hiding potential jobs.

So let's say I try to filter by the Area of Interest of "Technology," which offers 61 openings. Once this filter is applied I can then see how many of the "Job Families" have positions that fall under the "Technology" Area of Interest:

There's still no option to sort the results. 61 jobs isn't a ton but once again it's a complete mess. The first listing is 5 days old, the second is 30+, and the third is yesterday.

Write It Out

I don't have a lot of faith that all of the SWE jobs are going to be collected under the "Technology" banner and having to check each category seems entirely not worth the time. Maybe using a keyword search would help, right?

A keyword search of "Software" gives 71 results. "Areas of Interest" covered are:

While "Job Family" encompasses:

Software Developer, 70 jobs found

Software Engineer, 43 jobs found Area of Interest:

A keyword search of "Developer" gives 895 results...

Trying to Find the Remote

It's seeming increasingly unlikely that I'm going to find a way to avoid sifting through pages of irrelevant junk but maybe location filtering could help. The company isn't "remote first" but they do offer remote positions and these tend to be SWE positions (though most SWE positions are not remote). You might think that filtering down to only positions offered remotely could help. Well, unfortunately that's not an option. Really. You can't check a box for "remote only."

I learned by blind browsing that some positions list a location of "ZZ - Remote Location" - which is not an option you're able to filter by. You can filter by state but "ZZ - Remote Location" is not part of that list. It's also not immediately clear which positions may be remote while you're browsing. A position might show "4 locations" and maybe one of those 4 positions is "ZZ - Remote Location" but maybe all 4 are just offices in different states. You've got to click through to find out! But even then, you better check the position overview because there might just be other hidden info...

As an example, a post for a Software Engineer listed "4 locations" and when I clicked through I saw locations listed as:

But then reading over the actual position overview I see "you will be based in Pittsburgh, PA, Columbus, OH, Cleveland, OH, Birmingham, AL, or Dallas, TX." A bit further down it also says "Responsibilities require time in the office or in the field on a regular basis." So, "hybrid" (I guess?) but without any explanation of what that means and Columbus as a hiring location without it actually being listed and classified that way. So someone in Columbus would just have to open it by chance (assuming it hadn't been filtered out already) and then also ignore that Columbus isn't listed with the other locations at the top of the post and continue reading the finer details of the job anyway. As for the (implied) hybrid element, I guess that's just a nice surprise hidden in some posts?

Do You Qualify?

The level of effort here, unsurprisingly, continues with qualifications that are vague to the point of being useless. This is coming from the same Software Engineer position mentioned above. Again I'm wondering how this is expected to work:

"Successful candidates must demonstrate appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities for a role. Listed below are skills, competencies, work experience, education, and required certifications/licensures needed to be successful in this position."

Preferred Skills: Application Development, Business Management, Customer Solutions, Design, Group Problem Solving, Process Improvements, Release Management, Software Solutions, User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies: Application Delivery Process, Application Design, Architecture, Application Development Tools, Application Testing, Packaged Application Integration, System Development Life Cycle, Technical Troubleshooting, Technical Writing/Documentation

Work Experience: Roles at this level typically require a university / college degree, with 3+ years of relevant / direct industry experience. Certifications are often desired. In lieu of a degree, a comparable combination of education, job specific certification(s), and experience (including military service) may be considered."

Now take a wild guess if they list a salary range...

No wonder there's 1,500 open positions!

But I slog through, hopeful, all just to get an auto-rejection email. I recently applied for a Software Engineer position where I met all of the qualifications (they were slightly more specific than those in the example above) and I even used a ex-classmate who has been there for a few years as a referral on the application and still, less than 48 hours after submitting, I had an automated rejection email in my inbox.

The post is still accepting applications...