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What does "Under Review" vs "In Progress" vs "Under Consideration" mean on Workday?

By Pukar Khanal, Product Lead at ResumeAI

Updated July 15, 202612 min readPublished July 15, 2026

Pukar Khanal leads product at ResumeAI, working on AI resume parsing, ATS scoring, and semantic job matching. He writes about how applicant tracking systems read resumes and how job seekers get past them.

On Workday, application statuses are workflow labels a recruiter updates when they move your application between pipeline stages. They don't signal that someone is reading your resume right now. "Under Review" commonly means your application is sitting in the requisition's queue.

ResumeAI is the free Resume AI platform that builds your resume and matches you to real jobs across the hidden job market. Below: what each status typically means, and when it means nothing.

Key takeaways

Labels, not live signals. Statuses change when a recruiter moves the pipeline, often in batches.
Employers customize them. The same words can map to different internal stages at different companies.
Direct contact predicts more. A recruiter emailing to schedule a call outranks every label the portal shows you.
Follow up once. After roughly two to three weeks of a static status, and outside the portal.

What does each Workday status typically mean?

Employers customize their candidate-facing status labels in Workday. The same words can map to different internal stages at different companies. Everything below is the typical reading. Treat it as a decoder, not a contract.

Status	What it typically means in Workday's workflow	What it does NOT reliably mean	Expected wait / what to do
Received / Application Received	Your application was submitted successfully and sits in the requisition's applicant queue.	That anyone has looked at it. Receipt confirms submission, nothing more.	Normal for days to weeks. Use the time to proofread the profile fields Workday auto-filled from your resume's parse.
Under Review	Commonly the default post-submission bucket. Your application is in the pile a recruiter will work through when they screen the requisition.	That a person is reading your resume right now. The label reflects a pipeline stage, not live activity.	Weeks at this status are normal. Keep applying elsewhere; consider one follow-up after ~2–3 weeks static.
In Progress	Typically an active-pipeline bucket: screening, review, or scheduling is happening somewhere for your application.	A guaranteed interview. Label sets vary by employer, and some use “In Progress” as broadly as others use “Under Review.”	A mildly better sign. If no direct contact follows within ~2–3 weeks, follow up with the recruiter outside the portal.
Under Consideration	You are still an active candidate. You have not been dispositioned out of the requisition.	A shortlist confirmation. Some employers use this label where others use “In Progress.”	Same playbook as In Progress: wait, keep applying elsewhere, follow up once after ~2–3 weeks static.
Interview	A recruiter moved your application into an interview stage of the pipeline.	That the portal is your scheduler. Real coordination happens by email, and the label can lag or lead those messages.	Expect direct contact. Respond promptly and treat the recruiter's email, not the portal, as the source of truth.
Offer	Your application reached the offer stage of the requisition's workflow.	That the portal breaks the news. You will almost always hear from a human before or as the label changes.	Work through the recruiter directly. Portal tasks (forms, background-check steps) may appear here.
Not Selected / No Longer Under Consideration	You were dispositioned out of the requisition, often in a batch, sometimes well after the decision was effectively made.	Proof that a human read your resume, or that the rejection happened when the label changed.	Decode by rejection speed: instant usually means a screening rule; late-batch usually means the pipeline closed.

The sections below take the ambiguous cases in turn: the three-week static status, the status that reverted, the job that vanished, and what each one tells you.

What does "Under Review" actually mean on Workday?

Typically, your application landed in the requisition's queue and nobody has dispositioned it yet. In Workday's recruiting workflow, every job posting (a requisition) has a pipeline of stages. The status on your candidate home page is a label mapped from whichever stage your application sits in.

"Under Review" is commonly the default bucket after submission. The label switches on the moment you apply, hours or weeks before any human works the pile.

That's why "under review for three weeks" is so common. Recruiters screen requisitions in batches. A posting may collect applicants for weeks before anyone opens the list, and the status only changes when a recruiter or coordinator moves your application.

Three weeks of "Under Review" tells you nobody has touched the pipeline. It says nothing about whether you are strong, weak, first in line, or forgotten. Don't read a workflow label as a progress bar. It isn't measuring anything about you.

Is "In Progress" different from "Under Consideration"?

Sometimes. It depends on the employer. Workday lets each company name and map its own candidate-facing statuses. In many configurations, "In Progress" typically means your application is moving somewhere in the pipeline: a screen, a review step, interview scheduling.

"Under Consideration" is a broader active-candidate bucket meaning you haven't been dispositioned out. Plenty of employers use one label where another uses the other. Some expose only two or three generic labels for the entire pipeline.

Both are active buckets, both beat "Not Selected," and neither is a promise. As a rule of thumb, "In Progress" is mildly stronger than "Under Review," since something moved at least once. "Under Consideration" tells you that nothing has removed you yet.

Direct human contact is what predicts an interview. A recruiter emailing to schedule a call outranks every label the portal will ever show you.

Why hasn't my status changed in weeks, why did it revert, and why did the job disappear?

Static for weeks. Statuses change only when a human moves the pipeline, and recruiters touch requisitions in bursts. Between screening batches, every application in the queue sits at the same label, often until a decision batch fires at the very end. A static status is the system's resting state. It isn't a message.

Reverted status. A status that moves backward, say from "In Progress" to "Under Review," is almost always pipeline bookkeeping. A recruiter re-screens a batch, corrects a mis-move, reopens a step, or reorganizes candidates between stage buckets. The internal stage changes and the candidate-facing label follows. It looks like a demotion. It's usually administration.

The job disappeared. When a requisition is filled, closed, put on hold, or reposted, the posting can vanish from the careers site while your application still shows an active status. The label and the posting are separate objects, and nobody has to update one when the other changes.

A vanished posting with a static status usually ends in a batch rejection email. If the posting reappears with a new date, it was typically reposted. Re-applying to the fresh requisition is usually allowed and sometimes necessary, since pipelines are per-requisition.

When is the Workday status a weak signal?

More often than any candidate wants to hear. Workday statuses are recruiter-updated workflow labels. They are only as current as the last time a human touched the requisition. Recruiters commonly update them in batches, and often leave them stale until a rejection batch fires at the end of a search.

An application can sit at "Under Review" weeks after the role was effectively filled, because closing out the pipeline is a cleanup task, not a priority.

A Workday-powered Fortune 500 employer says much the same. Target's careers FAQ points candidates to the Workday candidate home page to monitor status. It notes that if you are no longer in consideration, you will typically be contacted by email or directly by the recruiter.

So the email and the human are the real notification, and the portal label is secondary. Refreshing your candidate home page daily is checking a cache. Glance at the status a couple of times a week and put your energy into the next application.

What actually predicts an interview?

The match, not the label. Whether you advance depends on how well your resume matches the requisition when a recruiter finally screens the pile, and whether Workday parsed your resume cleanly enough for that match to show.

Workday auto-fills your candidate profile from your resume's parse, and recruiters screen the parsed fields, not your original PDF. A two-column resume that Workday scrambles produces a garbled profile that ranks and reads as a weak candidate. You can sit at "Under Review" for weeks while the version of you being judged is gibberish, and the status will never tell you.

Proofread every auto-filled field before you hit submit, too. A parse error that feeds a wrong number into a screening field can end an application on data you never typed, as the knockout-questions guide covers in detail.

Should you follow up on a Workday application, and how?

Yes, once, after roughly two to three weeks of a static status, and not through the portal. Workday's candidate home page is a status display. No inbox on the other side of it is likely to be worked by a recruiter.

Send the follow-up to a human: the recruiter or hiring manager, found on LinkedIn or via a company-format email address. Keep it short, specific, and easy to answer.

Follow-up template

Subject: Following up on [Role title], applied [date] Hi [Name], I applied to [Role title] (requisition [number, if you have it]) on [date] and wanted to check in on the timeline. I'm particularly interested because [one specific, true sentence about the role or team]. If the search has moved on, no reply needed. If it's still open, I'd welcome the chance to talk. Thanks, [Your name]

Two boundaries keep this professional. One follow-up is persistence. A second unanswered message is your answer. And a follow-up can't move a workflow label. It can put your name in front of the human who moves it, the only lever the process offers.

If the status is an instant "Not Selected" that arrived minutes after you applied, no follow-up will help. A screening rule fired, and the rejection-speed decoder tells you which mechanism it was and what to fix.

How we know this, and what we cited

Written by Pukar Khanal, Product Lead at ResumeAI, and last reviewed on 15 July 2026. ResumeAI is the free Resume AI platform that builds your resume and matches you to real jobs across the hidden job market. Resume parsing and the candidate-profile fields it feeds are the core of the product, so we work with these workflow mechanics daily.

Workday's configuration documentation sits behind customer logins. So every status meaning here is described at the mechanism level with hedged language. Employers customize their candidate-facing labels, and anyone claiming a Workday status has one fixed meaning everywhere is overclaiming.

No statistics appear in this article. The follow-up advice carries no response-rate claims because we have no sourced numbers to give you.

Sources and further reading

Target Careers FAQ, a Workday-powered employer's first-party guidance. Candidates monitor application status from the Workday candidate home page under "My Applications," and candidates no longer in consideration are typically contacted by email or directly by the recruiter: corporate.target.com/careers/faqs
ResumeAI free ATS checker, which reads your resume the way hiring software does and reconstructs the parsed text that feeds Workday's auto-filled profile fields: cvai.dev/ats-resume-checker

Frequently asked questions

What does “Under Review” mean on Workday?

Typically that your application was received and is sitting in the requisition's queue — it is commonly the default bucket applications land in after submission, and it stays that way until a recruiter works the pipeline. It does not reliably mean a person is reading your resume at that moment. Workday statuses are workflow labels tied to the recruiting stage your application sits in, and they change when a recruiter or coordinator moves candidates between stages, not in real time as your file is opened. “Under Review” is closer to “in the pile” than “being read.”

What is the difference between “Under Review” and “In Progress” on Workday?

In many Workday configurations, “Under Review” is the passive post-submission bucket, while “In Progress” commonly indicates your application is actively moving somewhere in the pipeline — screening, review, or interview scheduling. But the honest caveat matters: employers customize their candidate-facing status labels in Workday, so the same label can map to different internal stages at different companies. Treat “In Progress” as a mildly better sign than “Under Review,” not as a promise — the signal that actually matters is direct contact from a recruiter.

What does “Under Consideration” mean on Workday?

Typically that you are still an active candidate for the requisition — you have not been dispositioned out. Some employers use “Under Consideration” where others use “In Progress”; the label sets vary because Workday lets each employer name its own external statuses. It does not reliably mean you have been shortlisted or that an interview is coming. The most useful reading is negative space: as long as the status is an active bucket rather than “No Longer Under Consideration,” your application has not been formally rejected.

My application has been under review for 3 weeks — is that a bad sign?

Not by itself. “Under Review” commonly persists for weeks because it reflects the requisition's queue, not a verdict on you. Recruiters work requisitions in batches: a posting may collect applicants for weeks before anyone screens the pile, statuses often go stale between touches, and some are only updated when a rejection batch finally fires. A static status mostly means nobody has moved the pipeline stage your application sits in. Keep applying elsewhere, and if the status has been static for roughly two to three weeks, a short follow-up to the recruiter or hiring manager outside the portal is reasonable.

Does “Under Review” mean rejection on Workday?

No. “Under Review” is an active status — rejection in Workday typically shows up as “Not Selected” or “No Longer Under Consideration,” usually alongside a templated email. What trips people up is the lag: because statuses are recruiter-updated labels, an application can sit at “Under Review” long after a decision was effectively made, until someone dispositions the remaining pipeline in a batch. So “Under Review” does not mean rejection, but a long-static “Under Review” also is not evidence you are still in the running — it is evidence nobody has updated the pipeline.

Why did my Workday application status change back?

Almost always because a recruiter moved your application to a different pipeline stage or reorganized the requisition — not because someone “demoted” you. Candidate-facing labels are mapped from internal recruiting stages, so administrative actions (re-screening a batch, moving candidates between stage buckets, reopening a step, correcting a mis-move) can make your visible status appear to revert, for example from “In Progress” back to “Under Review.” A reverted status is usually pipeline bookkeeping. The signals worth acting on are a disposition status like “Not Selected” or direct contact — not label churn in between.

Should I follow up on a Workday application, and how?

Yes — once, politely, after roughly two to three weeks of a static status, and not through the portal. Workday's candidate portal has no messaging channel a recruiter is likely to act on; the follow-up that gets read goes to a human, usually the recruiter or hiring manager on LinkedIn or by email. Keep it short: the role and requisition number, the date you applied, one sentence on why you fit, and a direct question about timeline. One follow-up is professional persistence; repeated portal refreshes and multiple messages are noise that cannot change a workflow label.

What to ask next

Arrived from a generative-search prompt? These are the usual follow-ups, each linked to the page that answers it.

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