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Last Updated: 2025-05-16
Setup Considerations: Notifications for Candidates

Setup Considerations: Notifications for Candidates

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and the use of notifications for candidates. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

Workday enables you to create predefined message templates so that recruiters can send email notifications to candidates. You can send recruiting marketing information or notifications about specific jobs.

Business Benefits

By configuring notifications for candidates, you can:
  • Give recruiters control and flexibility over the content and timing of their emails to candidates.
  • Provide consistent communication between recruiters and candidates by creating message templates.
  • Improve the candidate experience by reviewing candidate communication history to reduce the risk of sending duplicate emails.
  • Reduce manual effort for recruiters by adding merge fields to message templates.
  • Increase efficiency by sending emails to candidates in bulk.

Use Cases

You can use notifications for candidates to:
  • Invite 1 or more candidates to apply for a job.
  • Decline 1 or more candidates on a job requisition.
  • Send follow-up emails to candidates after interviews.
  • Notify university prospects of upcoming career events.
  • Notify a pool of candidates about new positions.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How do you want notify candidates?
You can use Workday Messaging to send SMS notifications to internal or external candidates who have opted in to receive SMS messages.
  • You can send SMS notifications to active candidates at any stage of the recruiting process. These include candidate reminders, custom business process notifications, and recruiting marketing communications.
  • You can use Workday Messaging as a custom notification within a business process. This allows you to send messages as part of a workflow. Example: When you close a job requisition, all remaining candidates receive a notification about their disposition.
  • You can configure email notifications for participants in a candidate conversation to alert them when there's a new SMS message in an active conversation.
What information do you want to communicate to candidates?
You can send 2 types of notifications to candidates during the recruiting process:
  • Emails to candidates who apply for a specific job. Candidates can't unsubscribe from these emails.
  • Emails to offer marketing information to candidates that isn't related to a specific job they've applied for. Example: Information about a career event involving your organization. You can enable candidates to unsubscribe from these emails.
Who is responsible for sending notifications to candidates?
You can limit certain groups or individuals from:
  • Creating message templates.
  • Editing email content.
  • Sending emails.
Example: You can enable recruiting administrators to create message templates and enable recruiters to edit and send emails only.
How do you want to communicate with candidates?
If you need to contact a large number of candidates at once, you can email candidates in bulk. Example: You have a pool of candidates that you didn't hire on a job requisition and you want to invite them to apply to a different job. You can also email candidates individually.
How do you want to communicate with candidates who speak different languages?
You can translate your message templates into different languages so that candidates receive messages in their preferred language.

Recommendations

You can enter or configure a default
Reply To
 email for message templates. If you don't enter a
Reply To
 email, candidate replies go to the email configured for your tenant.

Requirements

  • Create a recruiting communications email template to define the appearance and branding of your email. Message templates provide the content of your email.
  • Create segment-based security groups so that only authorized users are able to create or edit message templates.

Limitations

  • You can't delete message templates once you've created them but you can edit them at any time.
  • You can only have 1 active recruiting communications email template at a time.
  • You can only send attachments through email.
  • Attachments have a size limitation of 7MB.

Tenant Setup

Select the
Enable Candidate Fields in Notifications
check box on the
Edit Tenant Setup – Recruiting
 task for candidates to view data fields and receive notifications. Configure security access for the
Candidate Notification Receiver
 security group.
You can configure settings in the
Recruiting
 section of the
Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications
 task to enable recruiters to send emails to candidates on an ad hoc basis. You can also set up routing rules for notifications to specify how you send notifications.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Set Up: Message Templates
 in the System functional area.
You can create a segment-based security group that only enables users in the group to create recruiting message templates. Example: You want to enable your recruiting administrator to create message templates and you don't want your Learning administrator to have access.
Candidate Communication
 in the Recruiting functional area.
Users secured to this domain can send notifications to candidates and prospects using message templates for candidates who have applied for a specific job.
Invite to Apply
 in the Recruiting functional area.
Users secured to this domain can invite candidates to apply for other job requisitions using message templates for marketing information.
To setup
Invite to Apply
with notification designer template:
  • Create a Segmented Security Group and include the
    Candidate Notification Receiver
     as the group and the
    Workday Owned Segment
    of
    Job Application - External
    .
  • Add the
    Candidate Notification Receiver
     security group to the
    Invite to Apply
     domain with
    View
    access.

Business Processes

You can configure custom notifications that trigger on any business process step or on the status of a business process. You can also add a timed delay to custom workflow notifications on recruiting-related business processes. Example: You want to prevent a candidate from receiving a rejection message immediately after they submit their job application.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Candidate Communication
View a record of communications sent to a candidate, including:
  • Message content
  • Attachments
  • Sender
  • Subject
  • Timestamp
Candidate Job Applications
Access candidates' job applications and send notifications to candidates.
Find Candidates
Search your entire candidate population and send notifications to candidates.
My Candidates
Search candidates for whom you're the recruiter or manager and send notifications.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.