About Workiva

Workiva is the world's leading cloud platform for transparency, accountability, and trust. Workiva helps over 4,800 organizations streamline processes, connect data and teams, and maintain consistency across their mission-critical work. With 2,800 employees and headquarters in Ames, Iowa, Workiva serves enterprises in many sectors including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology.

Melissa Farmer, Manager of Talent Operations and Programs at Workiva, leads operations, data, early career recruiting, and candidate experience for the company's recruiting team. The team manages hundreds of job requisitions and screens thousands of candidates while navigating high application volumes and increasing operational complexity.

The team faced a critical challenge: their existing recruiting tech stack wasn't keeping pace with hiring demands. What started as a search for an early career recruiting solution evolved into a comprehensive platform evaluation after applications exploded and the team's needs expanded beyond campus recruiting.

The challenge: Manual processes and fragmented tools couldn't scale

Workiva's recruiting team was stuck in a cycle of manual, time-consuming workflows that prevented them from operating strategically. Their previous campus recruiting tool wouldn’t effectively integrate with Workday, forcing the team to duplicate work across systems. For campus super days alone, coordinators had to manually export schedules, recreate every interview in Workday, and send duplicate calendar invites to candidates and interviewers.

The problem extended beyond campus recruiting. With large volumes of candidates moving through recruiter screens, the team relied on a separate scheduling tool that required recruiters to both send candidates a scheduling link and manually create the interview in Workday afterward. "Recruiters had to manually go into Workday and schedule the invite so that they'd be able to submit feedback in the system," Melissa explained. "You're having to do things twice."

The fragmented tech stack also limited visibility into recruiting performance. While Workday offered customization for data fields, recruiters struggled to visualize and share recruiting metrics with stakeholders. The team needed a solution that could leverage Workday's data capabilities while providing better presentation and analytics.

As the team evaluated options, they had one non-negotiable requirement: any solution had to integrate effectively with Workday.

AI-powered screening accelerates recruiting speed

Previously, the screening process was entirely manual. Recruiters reviewed applications one by one and then sent scheduling links to the selected candidates. After candidates booked their screen, recruiters had to manually create the interview in Workday so they could submit feedback later.

Workiva brought on Gem's AI Application Review Agents to transform their screening workflow. The impact was immediate and measurable: recruiters now save approximately 10 hours per week on applicant screening. The team also reduced the time from application to interview by 3 days and the time to disposition for screened-out candidates by 18 days — meaning faster feedback for everyone.

Recruiters set up their screening parameters, and Gem AI surfaces the best-fit candidates based on criteria the recruiters define, helping them prioritize who to interview. When they're ready to schedule, candidates self-schedule their screens, and the interviews automatically flow into Workday with calendar invites sent to everyone involved.

The Workday integration proved critical to adoption. Unlike their previous tools, Gem automatically pushed updates to Workday. When recruiters need to add a last-minute interview to a candidate who's already scheduled, they can add it in job settings, click schedule, and it becomes part of the same interview stage in Workday—all synced automatically.

The team didn't just flip a switch on AI and hope for the best. Workiva invested heavily in enablement to ensure recruiters understood how to use AI ranking effectively. They developed AI criteria best practices with help from Gem's team, built comprehensive wikis, and when recruiters voiced concerns about AI scoring, Melissa encouraged investigation rather than distrust. 'Don't just flag it—let's open a ticket and get to the bottom of this,' she told her team. 

Bulk scheduling streamlined high-volume hiring

The previous scheduling process was labor-intensive: create schedules, export data, manually build everything in Workday, and duplicate calendar invites. 

Workiva reduced scheduling time by 90% using Gem's automated scheduling across recruiter screens and campus recruiting. For recruiter screens, the team went from 250 hours annually to 30 hours. For bulk campus recruiting, one recruiter managing 160 interviews went from 20 hours per season to just 1.3 hours.

With Gem, recruiters create a super day schedule once (about 15 minutes), bulk schedule candidates (about 5 minutes per group), and Gem handles the rest. Candidates self-schedule their interview times, and calendar invites are automatically sent to both candidates and interviewers, updating Workday in real-time.

What made the experience particularly meaningful was Workiva's partnership approach during the evaluation. Melissa clearly articulated their super day requirements to the Gem team, and when another customer had similar needs, Gem developed the feature collaboratively with both customers' input.

Data-driven recruiting with unified analytics

Workiva's recruiting team gained unprecedented visibility by combining Workday's customization capabilities with Gem's intuitive analytics. The partnership and integration between the two platforms created a powerful reporting infrastructure that informed strategic decisions.

For a recent sales hiring sprint, the team utilized Gem's analytics to forecast the number of candidates needed at each stage, create a projected timeline, and track progress in real-time. 

The Workday integration proved essential for customized reporting. Workiva had invested significant effort in building custom calculation fields in Workday to track metrics their way — breaking out quota versus non-quota roles, distinguishing converted interns from other internal hires, and organizing data to answer specific business questions.

This eliminated the need to rebuild custom reporting in a new system. When Workiva creates a new custom field in Workday, it automatically becomes available in Gem analytics. "Any time we want custom reporting in Gem, we just add a custom field in Workday and then it shows up," Melissa explained.

The division of labor between the two platforms played to each system's strengths. "What I like about Workday is the ability to customize and create custom fields," Melissa noted. "Presentation of data is where Gem really shines. So that partnership is really nice."

This unified data approach enabled the recruiting team to report on metrics across the entire funnel, from initial outreach through offer acceptance, without building complex integrations or exporting data to spreadsheets. Leaders could see pipeline health, identify bottlenecks, and make data-backed decisions about where to allocate recruiting resources.

Driving adoption through strategic enablement

Workiva's success wasn't just about implementing new technology — it was about ensuring the team knew how to use it effectively. The team developed a comprehensive change management program, which included creating a Gem AI policy in collaboration with their legal department, establishing wikis and hiring manager checklists, and launching a Gem community Slack channel for sharing questions and wins.

Rather than relying solely on vendor training, Workiva empowered recruiters to teach each other. Recruiters who excelled with specific modules led overview sessions for their colleagues. The team even conducted role-play activities where recruiters practiced introducing Gem to hiring managers during strategy kickoff calls. "We did a mock activity allowing them to introduce Gem to each other," Melissa explained.

Melissa measured the efficiency gains herself, building detailed analyses showing exactly how much time each workflow improvement saved. These metrics helped recruiters see the tangible impact of adopting new workflows and built momentum across the team.

Looking ahead

Workiva's implementation showcased what's possible when AI-first recruiting technology integrates seamlessly with existing systems rather than requiring wholesale replacement. By starting with their most pressing needs — application review, scheduling, and analytics — and expanding from there, the team carefully measured and achieved documented results within months

"It's really cool to see all of the modules working together," Melissa shared, describing how sourcing, sequencing, AI application review, and analytics functioned as one cohesive system rather than separate tools requiring manual data transfers.

For Melissa, the most valuable aspect isn't just the time savings or better data — it's feeling heard as a customer. When they needed guidance on AI criteria best practices, training was arranged. When they requested specific functionality, their feedback influenced the product roadmap.

For other recruiting teams considering similar transformations, Melissa's advice is straightforward: look for technology that enhances rather than replaces your existing systems, prioritize platforms that genuinely listen to customer needs, and invest in change management from day one. “You have to help people learn and understand—it's not the same as what they're used to,” Melissa emphasized. The time saved translates directly into recruiter capacity to do what they do best — build relationships with great talent.