Workday application status meanings: what each label actually tells you

Workday does not decide what your application status says. The employer does. Workday ships the stages, and gives each company a setting that replaces the wording candidates see — which is how one label can cover three different points in a hiring process.

Below is what each label meant on 19 September 2026, according to Workday’s published documentation and the careers-help pages of five named employers. Where only one employer defines a word, the table says so rather than presenting it as a rule.

What are the stages of a Workday application?

Workday’s own documentation for administrators lists nine steps an application can pass through: review candidate, screen, assess candidate, interview, reference check, offer, employment agreement, background check and ready for hire.

That list is a menu, not a path. The documentation says an employer chooses whether the process runs in a fixed order or a loose one, so two candidates at the same company can take different routes, and one application can sit in more than one stage at the same time.

A worked example: the University of Washington publishes its configured version as seven stages — review, screen, interview, reference check, offer, background check, ready for hire. It defines review as its recruiting partners deciding whether a candidate is eligible and meets the minimum qualifications. That is one employer’s arrangement of the menu, not a universal one.

What does “In Progress” or “In Process” mean on Workday?

This is the question worth answering properly, because Workday answers it itself. Its documentation tells employers to use an external label override in messages to candidates, and gives one example: instead of review, screen or interview, the candidate is shown “In Progress”.

So what does in process mean on Workday? It is a cover label. One word deliberately stands in for three different stages, because the employer did not want you to see which one you are in.

Two employers we read on 19 September 2026 prove how far that can stretch. UW–Madison publishes a table showing that a candidate sees “In Progress” once the application reaches interview, assessment or employment agreement. The University of Washington prints its own gloss next to the same words: application is under review. One is near the end, one is near the start.

“In Process” is the same thing with different wording. No employer page and no Workday page we opened uses it, so treat it as a rendering of “In Progress” rather than a separate stage. Candidates on job forums do discuss the two as if they differ; nothing we could open supports a difference.

What does “Under Consideration” mean on Workday, and is it a good sign?

One employer we read defines it. Emerson College lists “Under Consideration” among its Workday recruiting steps and describes it as a good way to bookmark candidates. It also notes that no automatic email goes out when you are put there.

No Workday documentation we could open defines the phrase at all. That matters, because the popular claim online — that it means a person has read your file and decided to keep you — is not something we found anyone in a position to know putting in writing.

Is it a good sign? It is better than “Completed”. Read as a bookmark, it says you are worth coming back to, which is not the same as being shortlisted. Nothing about it asks anything of you.

What does “Process Completed” mean on Workday?

Read it as closed, not as finishing. UW–Madison’s published mapping shows a candidate the label “Completed” in two cases: the application was declined or otherwise dispositioned, or the job posting itself was cancelled. Either way it moves to the inactive tab.

The wording is the trap. “Process completed” sounds like the employer has finished handling your file and will now decide. On that mapping it is the decision, already taken.

One caveat, and it is the honest one: that is a single employer’s configuration. No Workday-authored page we opened defines the word. If the posting is still live and you saw it flip within a day of applying, a cancelled requisition is as likely an explanation as a rejection.

What does “Not Selected” mean, and why can it appear within minutes?

It means ruled out for that posting. The University of Washington prints the meaning beside the label on its own site: no longer under consideration.

The speed has a documented explanation. Workday lets an employer set condition rules that run the moment a candidate applies, and those rules can read the answers to the application questionnaire. Workday’s own worked example is declining candidates who are not eligible to work in the country the job is in. The rules are checked in order and the first one that matches decides.

So a rejection in minutes usually means an answer you typed matched a rule the employer wrote — work authorization, a license, a location, a start date. It is not evidence that software graded your résumé, and Workday’s documentation does not describe anything of that sort. Candidates report these fast rejections often; what you cannot tell from the outside is which answer triggered one, or whether that employer switched the feature on at all.

Does Workday tell you if your application is rejected?

Not by itself. UW–Madison warns its own recruiters, in writing, that changing a candidate’s status — including removing them from consideration — sends the candidate no notification of any kind. Staff are told to send a message separately if they want the person to know.

Other employers switch some emails on. Emerson College publishes the three points where Workday writes to its candidates: a decline at the review stage, the reference-check request, and the offer letter. A decline later than review sends nothing there either. Ohio State is blunter about the rest — it says its recruiters are only able to give feedback to candidates chosen for interview.

The practical consequence: a rejection often arrives as a label change you have to go and look at. Check the portal rather than waiting on your inbox.

Why does the same status mean different things at different employers?

Because the words are settings, not fixed features. Workday documents an override an employer applies to the wording candidates see, and a separate task an employer uses to define its own list of reasons for declining someone. Both are chosen by the company, not shipped by Workday.

That is why a status table copied from one company is of no use at another. The label you are reading was written by the employer’s HR team, from a menu, for their own process.

The useful move is to search for your employer’s own careers help page. Several publish the mapping — UW–Madison, the University of Washington, Emerson College and Ohio State all do, and each one differs.

Where exactly do you check your Workday application status?

Outside applicants sign in to that employer’s careers site and open Candidate Home, where submitted applications are listed with their status. Ohio State, the University of Miami and the University of Washington all describe the same place under slightly different names.

Current employees of that company use a different route: Workday itself, under the career or jobs area, which shows the postings they applied for and each status.

Two details save time. Applications split across an active tab and an inactive one, so an application that has vanished has usually moved rather than disappeared. And the finest-grained detail an employer records — the individual step inside a stage — is never shown to you, only the broader status.

There is one Candidate Home account per employer, not one for all of them. Each company runs its own instance.

How long does each status usually last before it changes?

Nobody who would know has published a number. Across the Workday documentation and the six employer pages we read, not one states how long a status lasts. The pages that do give ranges are blogs with no stated source.

We found exactly one duration written down by an employer: Emerson College says its background check takes about two weeks. That is the last stage of its process, and it is that college’s own figure.

Candidates on job forums report applications sitting on the same label for a month or more, and occasionally moving backwards. That is worth knowing, and it is not the same as evidence of a normal range.

So a status that has not moved in three weeks tells you nothing. It is not a signal to read, and there is nothing in the portal you can do to move it.

What does a Workday status not tell you?

Five things it will not tell you, on the evidence we could open:

• Whether a person has opened your application. No label we found is defined as meaning that.
• Which stage you are actually in, when the employer has put one word over three of them.
• How many other candidates there are, or where you sit among them.
• Why you were declined. The reason exists in the employer’s system; it is not shown to you.
• That anything has changed at all — a status can be updated with no message sent.

Which leaves a short, honest reading. The status tells you whether the application is still open, and roughly how far along the employer’s own process it has been pushed. Everything beyond that is inference.