Some candidates abandon an application halfway through. Others never make it that far.

Your Workday Recruiting reports can show applications started, abandoned and completed. But there is another part of the funnel that can be harder to see: candidates who visit your career site, struggle to find what they need and leave before clicking “Apply.”

That makes your career site much more than a gateway to the ATS. It is your first opportunity to turn candidate interest into action – and the beginning of a connected hiring experience.

 

Give Candidates the Information They Need

Candidates rarely decide to apply based on a job title alone. Research has found that 54% of job seekers typically research every company before applying, with 39% naming company career sites as their most valuable research channel. Salary and benefits are also high on the list of information candidates want to find.

That has a direct impact on career site conversion. When candidates have to search across multiple pages, work through a dense job description or leave the site to find basic information, they may not abandon an application. They may never start one.

That is why candidate experience cannot be treated as a series of disconnected steps. Discovery, research, job search and application are all part of the same hiring journey – and the technology supporting them should work together.

For organizations using Workday Recruiting, that is an important distinction. Workday can support external career sites, job posting templates, application forms, job alerts and candidate engagement capabilities. But before candidates reach that part of the journey, the career site needs to give them the information and confidence to take the next step.

 

Make Job Discovery Easier

Some of the biggest drop-off points in the candidate journey happen during job discovery.

A candidate may know the kind of work they want without knowing the exact job title your organization uses. Traditional keyword search asks them to translate their interests into your internal terminology. Generic job descriptions can make roles difficult to understand quickly. And when a candidate has a specific question, a standard FAQ may not give them the context they need.

Radancy Labs’ research shows how candidate expectations are changing. In a study of 61 job seekers across early- to late-career levels, 84% rated an AI-powered natural-language search experience as somewhat or much better than typical career sites. When given the option, 71% used full sentences or conversational prompts instead of searching only by job title and location.

Candidates are not looking for AI simply for the sake of using AI. They want technology that understands their intent, removes unnecessary friction and helps them make more informed decisions – while keeping the experience relevant, transparent and human.

 

Turn Candidate Interest Into Action

The opportunity is not simply to add AI features to a career site. It is to use intelligence to create a more intuitive discovery experience – one that understands candidate intent and helps people move from exploration to relevant opportunities more efficiently.

AI-powered natural-language search is one way to make that happen. Instead of asking candidates to know your job taxonomy, it allows them to describe the kind of work they want and receive relevant results. They can search the way they naturally think about their skills, interests and career goals.

Once candidates find a potential role, the next step is helping them understand it quickly.

Radancy research also found that 64% of candidates preferred AI summaries that presented job details concisely, while 74% wanted AI to highlight key information such as salary, benefits and responsibilities.

The full job description still matters. A clear summary simply gives candidates a useful place to start, with the option to dig deeper when they are ready.

An AI-powered conversational Career Discovery Assistant can make the experience even more helpful by answering questions in context rather than sending candidates through a rigid Q&A tree.

Together, these capabilities allow the career site to do more of the work that happens before an application. It can help candidates discover relevant opportunities, understand what each role involves and decide whether it feels like the right fit.

 

Strengthen the Experience in Front of Workday

For Workday customers, improving this part of the journey does not require rethinking the ATS. The opportunity is to strengthen the connection between the career site and Workday.

A connected approach turns the career site into an intelligent front door for the recruiting experience. Live job information can flow from the ATS to the career site, while candidate and application data can move back into the recruiting workflow without unnecessary re-entry or disconnected steps. This connected foundation also enables agentic AI to help orchestrate experiences and actions across the hiring journey, using intelligence and automation to reduce friction while keeping people in control of critical hiring decisions.

Radancy supports this experience through ATS integration, including job-feed integration and the flow of candidate data into recruiting workflows.

Together, Radancy and Workday can create a more connected hiring journey – combining intelligent candidate experiences with the recruiting workflows, data and processes that move candidates forward. Rather than treating the career site and ATS as separate stages, organizations can connect them to create a more seamless experience from discovery through application and beyond.

For talent acquisition leaders, that means looking beyond application completion rates and measuring what happens before candidates click “Apply.” Career site searches, job-page engagement, bounce rates and exit points can all reveal where candidates are getting stuck or dropping out.

If those signals are difficult to see today, that may be the first clue that there is a part of your hiring funnel ready for improvement.

Understanding the candidates who never reach Workday can reveal one of the biggest hidden opportunities in the hiring funnel – helping organizations convert more interest into qualified applicants while improving candidate experience and hiring efficiency.

Download Radancy’s Buyer’s Guide to Intelligent Career Site Technology for Workday  to evaluate your current career site, uncover funnel drop-off points and identify the capabilities that can improve candidate experience and hiring performance.

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