Do you love the experience that Workday Recruiting provides to your candidates? If you answered “no,” you’re not alone.

For tasks such as tracking hours and onboarding, Workday can be a powerful tool. However, as a Human Capital Management (HCM) system, Workday isn’t built specifically for hiring. Applicant tracking system (ATS) functionality is just a small feature of Workday’s overall suite of functions.

Workday Recruiting is the most commonly used Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in the world yet it’s far from the most intuitive. In fact, according to SHRM and HR influencers like Tim Sackett and William Tincup, many teams using Workday are not satisfied with the candidate experience provided by their ATS but have limited choice in the matter.

There’s good news if you’re stuck in a similar situation at your organization. There are cost-effective ways you can improve your candidate experience even if you’re locked into Workday or any other ATS. Read on to discover how.

Turning a second-choice ATS into a first-rate solution

Often talent acquisition (TA) teams are required to use an ATS that isn’t their first choice. This is usually the case with Workday Recruiting, a supplement of the comprehensive Workday HCM, rather than a selling point. Teams use it for savings or due to cloud strategy, even though it does not provide a best-in-class recruiter or candidate experience.

The problem isn’t just limited to Workday Recruiting either. Sometimes a TA team inherits an ATS with an active contract through a merger, acquisition, or another transition. Leadership may be unwilling or unable to invest the resources into a new ATS implementation. Or perhaps an organization is multinational and is limited to systems optimized for large global enterprises, such as Workday, Taleo, or SuccessFactors.

So, if you’re stuck using Workday Recruiting (or some other ATS you don’t love), what can you do?

Some organizations try to compensate for the gaps in their candidate experience with add-on solutions, like recruitment marketing platforms (RMPs), candidate relationship management (CRM) platforms, assessment tech tools, candidate communication tools, and more.

However, adding to your TA technology stack can create new problems, including:

• A diluted employer brand due to inconsistent look and feel across systems
• A lack of data-based insights due to inaccurate measurements of candidate progress, conversions, and drop-offs across systems
• A frustrated candidate pool forced to create multiple accounts and navigate different systems throughout the application process

In short, using multiple systems can make for a confusing experience for candidates that can lead to drop-offs and a poor brand impression. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to pull these systems together into one seamless and branded experience on top of your existing technology stack.

Improving your candidate experience with Skuid

Skuid is a UX/UI toolkit that enables you to build seamless candidate and employee experiences on top of your existing technology stack. Skuid integrates with all your existing systems, from Workday to Salesforce and beyond, so you can build an employer-branded application process that candidates will actually complete.

Here are three steps to build a better candidate experience with Workday or another ATS.

1. Map out the candidate experience you would like to provide

Before you start rebuilding your application process, first imagine yourself in a candidate’s shoes. What does your ideal application process look like? How does that compare with the one you currently provide?

Identify problem areas and then work out the best approach to address those gaps. Common problem areas to keep an eye out for include:

• Places where candidates need to create an account and log in
• Screens and systems without branding or employer messaging
• Transitions where the look, feel, or behavior of the candidate experience changes
• Steps or systems in your process that are frustrating and take a long time to complete

Thinking about the end-user at the start of the app development process helps you understand business problems, user needs, and technical constraints. The methodology is called human-centered design and it will help you build a better candidate experience.

2. Integrate your ATS with an employee experience platform

The Skuid Employee Experience Platform (EXP) allows you to adjust the look, feel, and experience that candidates have while using the ATS or other HR tech. You can architect the exact process and flow of information you want beyond the limitations of your ATS and HR stack.

Further, Skuid enables your other TA tech stack components, like job boards and CRM software, to integrate seamlessly with the ATS and with one another. As candidates move from one system or app, they will have a unified experience including consistent branding throughout their journey.

3. Rely on the data to inform and adjust your approach over time

Skuid also allows you to access better insights with seamless tracking of candidates across systems. You can keep all the data collected in a single source, enabling your team to better understand the experience and make strategic improvements over time. TA teams can then feed these analytics into other data systems to create a better picture of the full employee lifecycle.

Capturing this information allows teams to improve hiring and understand which process optimizations and recruiting programs have the biggest impact on your organization. This way, your TA team can focus on increasing candidate conversions by letting your data guide the decision-making. They’ll also avoid the frustrations of using a dissatisfying ATS with limited analytics.

Better candidate experiences lead to better talent

Improving the out-of-the-box candidate experience and analytics capabilities that Workday Recruiting and other ATS solutions provide is critical for attracting and hiring the best talent. If you’re stuck using an ATS you don’t love alongside a disparate talent acquisition tech stack, you can still pull everything together and see the results using Skuid.

Learn more about building a better candidate experience by scheduling a demo of Skuid today.