Fix your #1 candidate drop-off 📉

Read time: 5.2 minutes

Hey, there. Mia and Ceci here.

Remember that time you lost your best candidate to a password reset?

Yep… we’ve all been there 🙋‍♀️

You’re a candidate (let’s say your name is Sarah). You’re on your phone, scrolling LinkedIn, and you see it—the perfect job. It’s exactly the role you’ve been waiting for 🤩 Your heart does a little thump. You tap "Apply."

And then... you hit the wall 😐

You land on a Workday career portal. It looks familiar. You know you’ve applied to this company before, maybe... three years ago? You type in your email. The portal, in its infinite, robotic wisdom, replies:

"A profile with this email already exists. Please sign in."

You stare at the password field. You have no idea what that password is. How could you? It was 482 passwords ago.

So you tap “Forgot your Password?”, enter your email, and... you wait. You check your spam folder. Nothing. You tap it again. Five minutes later, two reset emails land in your inbox. You click the newest one, create another complex password (let's go with WinterIsComing!2025!), and finally, you're in.

But then suddenly real life demands your attention! Your train 🚆 is at your stop. Or your kid needs a snack. Or your meeting is starting. The moment is gone. You close your phone, and that spark of excitement burrows under a pile of frustration.

You (as in you, at your current company—not Sarah) just lost your perfect candidate 🥲

Not to a competitor, not due to salary, but in a digital black hole of your own making.

This, our friend, is the "Application Black Hole," and it’s the single most expensive, overlooked, and infuriatingly solvable problem in talent acquisition 😤

And today, we’re showing you how to plug it for good.

Foundations 🧱 (why this matters so much)

This isn’t just a "nice-to-have" feature. This is a fundamental mindset shift. For years, we in the HR Tech world have accepted clunky, frustrating user experiences as the “price of admission” for a powerful, secure back-end system.

But candidates? They don't live in the HR Tech world…

The "Amazon Effect" on Your Career Site

Your candidates are consumers. Their baseline for a good digital experience is set by Amazon (one-click checkout), Google (one login for everything), and Apple (Face ID). They expect zero friction.

Then they hit your career site, and you force them to time-travel back to 2003.

This isn't just a minor inconvenience; it's a critical business problem that shows up in four painful ways:

Massive Candidate Drop-Off: How many Sarahs are you losing every single day? Every single click you add to the apply process is a new opportunity for a great candidate to abandon their application 👻 The password wall is the highest wall you have.

Wasted Sourcing Dollars: Think of all the money and effort you spend on LinkedIn ads, Indeed sponsorships, and job board postings. You’re paying to drive traffic to your site, only to have your own front door turn them away 😩

Brand Damage: A clunky, frustrating application process sends a clear message: "We are a clunky, frustrating company to work for." It's your candidate's very first interaction with your brand, and you're telling them you don't respect their time 😬

The Duplicate Profile Nightmare: What does Sarah do when she’s really determined? She gives up on her main email and creates a new profile with her old [email protected] account. Now you have two (or more) profiles for the same person, your data is a mess, and your recruiters are confused 😵‍💫

The problem isn't the candidate. It's your front door.

And the fix is Social Sign-In 😎

It’s a feature that allows candidates to sign in to your Workday career site using their existing Google or Apple credentials. No new password. No "Forgot Password" spiral. Just one click.

And here’s the best part: The configuration is laughably simple.

The nuts and bolts 🔩 (setting up Social Sign-In)

We’re going to hold your hand through this because that’s what we do. But truly, this is one of the easiest, high-impact configs you’ll ever “configure”.

Your goal is simple: Let people use an account they already have to log in. Here’s how…

Step 1 (A.K.A - The only step 😉): Enable Social Sign-In

First, you need to tell your tenant that this is something you want to do.

In your Workday search bar, type in the task: Edit Tenant Setup - Recruiting.

Scroll down (waaaay down) until you find the "Candidate Social Sign-In Providers" section.

Click on the Hamburger menu, and select "Apple", or “Google”, or why not both? 🤷‍♀️

If you want (or the lawyers say you should), enter a consent message in the “Candidate Social Sign-In Consent Message” field.

Click OK.

That was easy, right? You’ve told Workday, "Ya, we want to do this!" In about 24 hours (you can't speed this part up—Workday needs to run a background job), those "Sign in with..." buttons will now appear on your career site's login page. Magic! 🪄

What this unlocks 🔓 (the "so what?")

This is more than just a login button. This feature unlocks three game-changing scenarios.

Use Case 1: The Mobile Apply Miracle

This is the big one, ya'll. In this day and age, applying for jobs on a mobile phone is becoming more and more common. The name of the game with mobile anything is on-the-go convenience. And you know what’s not convenient? The whole password hullabaloo we described earlier 🙃

But with Social Sign-In, the candidate's phone already knows their Google or Apple account. They tap "Sign in with Google," their phone prompts them for their fingerprint or Face ID, and boom 💥 They're in. The single biggest barrier to a mobile application goes POOF! Gone.

Use Case 2: The "Welcome Back" Experience

Let's go back to Sarah, your candidate who applied three years ago. In this new world, she hits your career site. She sees she has an old profile. But right below the password box, she sees "Sign in with Apple."

She taps it. Workday is smart enough to see her email address from Apple, match it to the email on her old candidate profile, and ask, "Hey, is this you? Want to link these accounts?"

She clicks yes. No password reset. No new profile. She’s in, and you have one clean, updated profile. It's a beautiful thing 🙌

Use Case 3: The Data Purity Win

This is the one for all our fellow data nerds 🤓 You know the duplicate profile nightmare we talked about recently? Well, this helps solve it. When candidates use a consistent Social Sign-In, they stop creating new, rogue accounts every time they forget a password. This means your candidate database gets cleaner. Your analytics get sharper. Your recruiters' lives get easier. Everybody wins.

Pro tips & strategy considerations 🎯

Enabling this feature is a no-brainer. But as always, we want to leave you with a few extra strategic nuggets…

This is Step 1, Not the Whole Solution: This feature fixes the front door🚪, but it doesn't fix a 20-page application process. This should be paired with a simplification of your Job Application business process. Fix the login, then fix the 30 supplemental questions you're asking about their high school GPA 😳

Don't Forget Change Management: Tell your recruiting team you're doing this. Explain to them why it's so important. They are your front-line brand ambassadors, and they need to understand how this helps them and the candidate!

The Big Picture: Workday is listening! For us practitioners, this feature is more than just a feature. It's a signal. It shows that Workday is prioritizing the front-end, consumer-grade candidate experience in a way they never have before. It signals a new era of user-centricity, and we are so here for it 🎉

Conclusion: Just... turn it on 💡

This isn't a six-month project. This isn't a complex, heavy lift. This is, without a doubt, the single easiest, highest-impact configuration you can do this quarter to improve your hiring metrics.

You could be losing top talent right now because of a password field 🤬

So GO ON! Log in to your tenant… make the update… and stop letting your perfect candidates float away into the digital black hole. Your recruiters (and all the Sarahs out there) will thank you for it 😉

As always, thank you for being a reader!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳

Until next time!

Mia & Ceci

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions

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