What if your recruiters spent less time screening candidates and more time actually recruiting? In our latest AI case study conversation, Allison Joyce, Workday’s VP and Global Head of Talent Acquisition, shared how AI’s real value isn’t just time saved—it’s what people can accomplish with the time they get back.
The company embedded AI into its recruiting workflows to cut down on manual tasks—only to realize that other parts of the process needed improvement. Ultimately, Workday cut candidate screening volume by 57%, reduced recruiter workload by 40% and saved 24,000 hours of scheduling work in 9 months.
Deploying AI into Workflows
Rather than add standalone tools, Workday embedded AI capabilities into recruiters’ existing workflows:
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Candidate screening (Hired Score): Ranks applicants by job-specific skills and identifies qualified internal and former candidates. Recruiters review scores before making decisions.
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Interview scheduling (Paradox): Lets qualified candidates self-schedule interviews, reducing scheduling time by 92%—from days to hours.
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Interview intelligence (BrightHire): Records human-led interviews, generates summaries and helps evaluate interview quality and consistency.
What the AI Process Revealed
AI exposed weaknesses in job descriptions. Job profiles lacked the specificity for accurate skills matching, forcing recruiters to refine requirements and retrain the screening agent so it could identify quality-fit candidates.
New operational gaps. For AI to help with interview scheduling, the calendars of hiring managers had to be accurate. Recruiting practices also had to be documented, prompting Workday to do some organizational housekeeping.
Key Learnings for CHROs and HR Leaders
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Start small, refine, and scale. Workday spent 6 months piloting AI across functions and regions, working with recruiters and legal, privacy and security teams.
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Reinvest capacity into strategic work. Technology recruiters increased monthly hires gradually while spending more time on referrals and candidate engagement.
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Keep humans accountable. Recruiters review AI-generated scores and interview summaries. Workday also audits screening data every 6 weeks for potential bias.
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Earn your candidate’s trust. Roughly 20% of candidates decline AI-assisted interview recording, reinforcing the importance of transparency and consent.
What’s Next? Fewer Resumes, Fewer Job Descriptions, More Skills Testing
Joyce believes companies will soon give up traditional resumes and job applications (items AI has mastered and polished) in favor of skills-based assessments that directly measure what candidates can do. Workday plans to pilot skills assessments earlier in the hiring process and explore a new approach to early-career recruiting.
AI didn’t just make Workday’s recruiting process faster. It prompted a redesign of recruiting. The question for CHROs: Are your AI investments simply accelerating existing processes or fundamentally changing how HR delivers value?