Workday Interview Questions

In this Workday Interview Questions blog, we will be covering all the frequently asked questions that will help you ace the interview with their best solutions. But, before starting, let us know how the demand for Workday experts is growing.

Workday is a popular cloud-based vendor for human capital management and finance applications. World's leading research firm Gartner also named it as a leader for Cloud HCM suites and Financial Management Suites in its recent release. When it comes to job opportunities, Workday tops the list for human resource and finance roles. Indeed, a popular job portal shows the average salary paid for Workday pros is $103k.

A Brief Introduction to Workday Interview Questions | MindMajix

Hence, there is a great demand for professionals to work in this field. But, how do you get yourself a job in this tough competition? Well, we have answers to that!

This Workday Interview Questions blog covers all the core concepts from basic to advanced levels. So utilize these Questions to improve your chances of being hired in your next interview!

Let's get started!

We have categorized Workday Interview Questions - 2023 (Updated) into  levels they are:

• Basic Level
• Advanced Level
• Workday FAQs
• Workday Interview Tips

Top Workday Interview Questions and Answers

Below mentioned are the most frequently asked Workday interview questions. Let's have a look into them

Frequently Asked Workday Interview Questions

1. What is Workday?
2. What are the advantages of Workday?
3. What companies use Workday?
4. What database does Workday run on?
5. How to access a Workday Standard Delivered Report?
6. What are Workday Integrations?
7. Describe workday payroll?
8. What are the ways to create a report in Workday?
9. What is the use of Domain Security Policies?
10. How do you manage access to integrations?

If you want to enrich your career and become a professional in Workday, then enroll in "Workday Training". This course will help you to achieve excellence in this domain.

Basic Level Workday Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is Workday?

Workday is a cloud-based software provider that specializes in financial management and human capital management solutions. Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, two former executives at PeopleSoft, founded it in 2005. It’s a pioneer in SaaS business apps and is renowned for its ease of usage and rapid setup when compared to HCM and other finance systems.

2. What are the modules in the Workday?

Following are the Workday modules:

• Workday for Finance and Supply Chain
• Workday for HR and Payroll
• Workday's Foundation Data Model
• Workday Reporting.

3. List out the main Workday features.

The main features of Workday are:

• Performance management
• Time tracking
• Recruiting and Onboarding
• Human Resource Management
• Audit and Internal controls 
• Payroll solutions
• Goal management
• Career and development planning
• Accounting and Finance
• Big Data Analytics Integration
• Talent Management
• Centralized Business Management
• Cloud Connect for Third-party payroll.

4. What are the advantages of Workday?

Workday benefits include:

• Increased productivity - Using separate and disconnected systems for essential processes results in an operational slowdown. Most the medium-sized businesses reported that productivity has increased when moved to Workday (a single system).
• Better insight into company data - Surveys state that a single system gives greater visibility into relevant data and better reporting. With Workday, you can turn data into insight and insight into action.
• Build a happy, motivated workforce - Improves employee engagement that helps them to grow at every stage of their career.
• Improved operational efficiency - Most businesses reported that operational efficiency improved when moved from multiple to a single system. Workday delivers company commitments more quickly and cost-effectively than before. 
• Manage Compliance and risk - Workday provides tools to amplify audit and Compliance and meet new regulations with ease.
• Reduced costs - Bringing together several essential functions can reduce the technology costs, maintenance, and staff time.

Related Article: Workday Certification

5. What companies use Workday?

Companies using Workday:

• Walmart 
• Netflix
• Adobe
• Salesforce
• VISA
• Siemens
• Santander
• Prudential
• COMCAST
• Puma
• Ryan.

Explore Workday Tutorial for Beginners

6. Why is Workday so popular?

Business change is happening faster than ever. To meet the unique needs of today's labor market and make an impact, you need a flexible HR system to help you handle whatever comes next.

Workday provides a cloud-native system with finance, HR, planning, and analysis. It allows you to surface insights, respond to changes, and enable you to work more efficiently than ever. With one HR system from Workday, you can bring actual value to your business.

Also, many world's top leading companies like Netflix, Adobe, etc., trust Workday to carry out their HR and finance-related functionalities. 

7. Is Workday free?

No, Workday does not offer any free plan. To know more about Workday Pricing, contact the sales team to get a quote specifically tailored to your business requirements.

8. What database does Workday run on?

Workday uses a relational database to store all metadata and application data. To improve application performance, it keeps all application metadata and most application data in memory.

9. How do I get access to the Workday?

The Workday can be accessed through the Workday App, OKTA App, or the website. First, you need to create an account and use that credentials to access Workday in an organization. As per the access rights given to the particular individual, you'll get the accessibility of specific tasks and reports.

10. Define Workday Worklets?

The icons which are displayed on the home page and are used to provide quick access to frequently referenced data and tasks are defined as Workday Worklets. The below screenshot shows the frequently used Worklets which you may find on your Workday home page:

11. What kind of application is Workday?

Workday is a cloud-based software vendor specializing in enterprise resource management, human capital management, and financial management applications.

12. Will Workday work on any computer with any internet browser?

Yes, Workday is supported by almost all internet browsers, including Google Chrome, Internet Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

13. What is the Workday next release called, and when will it go live?

Workday's fall update, known as 2021 R1, will go live on March 13, 2021. It brings many enhancements to Time and Absence, Recruiting, Payslips, and general updates to the interface to improve accessibility and usability.

14. How many Workday updates are released per year?

Twice a year, Workday issues major updates to its software.

15. What does a tenant mean in Workday?

A tenant is an application that requires its own secure computing environment. Every workday customer has their secure tenant, which only they can access. 

• Workday tenant is a unique instance of the software with a separate set of data held by Workday in a logically separated database.
• Multi-tenancy is a crucial feature of Workday that allows you to experience the complete spectrum of Workday functionality through one application server.

16. Name a few post-production and pre-production Workday Tenants.

Post-Production Workday Tenants

• Sandbox Tenants
• Production Tenants.

Pre-Production Workday Tenants

• Implementation Tenant 
• Gold Tenant.

17. What kind of reports will Workday provide?

HCM, financials, and Payroll in Workday will have standard and custom reports as per the business needs. Few reports combine information from both the Payroll/HCM and Financial modules. Features of these reports include custom prompts, calculated fields, graphics, charts, and interactivity. Data in the reports can be made available to other applications.

[ Check out: Workday Architecture ]

18. Is Workday an ERP system? 

Ans. Yes, Workday is a true Enterprise Resource Planning system. It's a unified SaaS software system for finance, planning, human capital management, project management, and business intelligence. Workday ERP is used for business processes and data transformation enterprise-wide.

19. List down the Workday HCM modules.

The following are the modules of Workday HCM -

• Talent management
• Time tracking
• Human Resource Management
• Recruiting and Onboarding
• Workforce planning and analytics 
• Payroll
• Time and Absence management
• Audit and Internal Controls.

20. What are Workday Integrations?

Workday presents a single architecture, cloud-based enterprise applications, and management suites that blend HR, finance, and analytics into a single system. Through this, users can manage and customize data sets to any workforce source easily.

Workday integrations are used for balancing high-security standards, powerful insights, agile updates, and intuitive UI across devices so that anyone can customize dashboards to get actionable insights.

The major types of Workday Integrations are:

• Enterprise Information Builder (EIB)
• Workday Studio
• Cloud Connect.

21. Name some security group types supported by Workday?

Workday security groups fall into the following categories: 

• User-based
• Role-based  
• Intersection 
• Aggregation  
• Segment-based.

22. What is Workday Raas?

RaaS stands for Reporting as a Service. Workday RaaS is a feature that allows exporting data by creating a custom report within Workday and then exposes it as a web service. The output can be of many formats such as XML, RSS, or JSON and can be modified within the URI.

23. What do you understand about the term 'Business Process' in Workday?

In Workday, the business process is a collection of tasks that you can initiate, act upon, and finish to accomplish the desired business objective as part of an HR procedure. Business processes define Workday's core functionality. It describes how significant events flow and allows the configuration of approvals, notifications, conditions, etc. 

Examples of business processes are changing jobs, Hiring, Terminating Employees, Proposing Compensation Change, and more.

24. Define Workday Business Process Framework.

The Workday Business Process (WBP) Framework enables you to improve process flows within a company by inducing various activities. It allows customers to configure and manage core flows within the Workday to connect people, apps, and services. In the Workday applications, the business process framework is where all the transaction-related changes to data and events originate.

25. What type of conditions define Business Process Steps in Workday?

In Workday, StartProxy is the task that gives all the details of the business processes involved in the Organization. Business process steps involve validation condition, running condition, entry condition, and exit condition.

26. Tell me, will business process events be impacted if you modify the business process definition in Workday?

In Workday, to edit the business process definition, you need to search the business process name ->edit the definition of the related action. By creating a new business process definition, the already running business process won't get affected. It keeps running in the background without causing the event to overlap.

27. Which task helps you to test assigned steps in the business process in the organization? 

'Start Proxy' is the task used to test the assigned steps in the business process. Proxy policies are configured from the "Create Proxy Access Policy" task, and they cannot be executed in production environments.

28. Which type of approvals can you configure in a review step in a Business Process?

• Individual Approval
• Consolidated Approval Chain
• Consolidated Approval
• Mass Approval
• Approval Chain. 

29. What report provides the details of all the actions available for the specific Business Process Type?

Business Process Configurations Options report.

Advanced Workday Interview Questions and Answers

30. How can Organizations be tied to Business Processes? 

Workday allows the configuration of Business Processes per Organization. While implementing a business process with multiple Organization-dependent definitions, Workday follows a hierarchy to check which definition to execute. An example could be multiple hire business process definitions depending on departments.

E.g., Hire for Finance department, Hire for the HR department, Hire for the IT department, etc.

31. What is a Business Process Completion Step?

The business process is considered complete once the completion step finishes the execution. All the actions depend on business process completion but do not depend on all the steps being executed.

For example, an organization wants to hire a candidate, and that position requires background verification. Suppose if you do not want to wait for all the information to come back from the background check business process, you can set the completion step before the last step. That will allow the pre-hire or hire business processes and enter the Background Check Business Process before the Pre-Hire executes all the steps.

If no steps are marked as a completion step, then the last step will be the completion step by default.

32. What actions can you do with a Business Process Event if you want to modify its behavior in a running state?

You can use actions like cancel, reassign, correct, and delegate to modify the business process event's behavior pattern. To search for events, you can use the prefix "event"

33. What are the types of reports generated by Workday?

Workday offers three primary types of reports:

• Basic - At this level of reporting, you'll be able to summarise information related to pay, Time Off, and more.
• Advanced - This reporting type allows you to manage complex multi-data object reporting and enables multi-level sorting and complex record selection (filtering).
• Composite - This reporting type supports more complex calculations and is used more on the finance side of Workday.

34. Name the prefix used to limit the search for business processes.

"bp:" is used for limiting the search to business processes.

35.  Does IDS (Institutional Data Store) store every piece of existing data from the mainframe and Workday?

No, IDS is not a backup system. The mainframe's data that is no longer needed is achieved separately. Data in Workday will be backed up on the Workday server. The IDS will store only a subset of Workday data if the data is recognized as critical data and necessary for a significant downstream report or data feed that Workday cannot handle.

36. What is the relation between Business objects and Data sources in Workday?

Workday stores your data as business objects. A business object can be defined as a template of an entity, whereas a data source is the data selection or group of data that creates the template.

Data sources are defined and delivered by Workday. Workday delivers various data sources for primary business objects. A data source can be designed to return all instances of the primary business object, or it can have built-in filtering logic defined by Workday

37. Describe workday payroll.

Workday Payroll is a part of the Workday HCM Suite that includes human capital management and advanced payroll capabilities. It streamlines the entire payroll process from initial hiring to complete payroll processing and tax compliance.

Here are the essential features of Workday Payroll which make it a great fit for enterprises and global businesses are - 

• Pay groups - It allows you to create specific groups for specific employee types, rather than paying hourly, salaried, and executive-level payroll the same way across the board.
• Automatic tax updates - This feature allows you to have the latest tax information for reporting purposes.
• Multiple tax filling options - This feature allows you to outsource taxable tasks and wages.
• Fully customizable - Workday Payroll is fully customizable to create the interface you want to make the options applicable to your role within the business.  
• Automatic payroll audits - It helps to reduce common payroll errors.

38. Is Workday Payroll available as a stand-alone payroll service provider?

No, Workday Payroll is a part of Workday HCM that provides complete employee management, including hiring, termination, payroll processing, and more.

39. Will Workday handle my payroll taxes?

You can choose either an integrated service to manage payroll reporting and tax remittance or handle the entire tax process in-house, common in enterprise-level organizations for better control of the processes.

40. Explain Workday Financial Management.

Workday Financial Management is a cloud solution designed to provide complete business insight into your organization. It captures all transactions and supports core foundational processes in real-time.

Workday Financial Management is built on the adaptive, global foundation that delivers organizations with core management capabilities. The core areas used to achieve great insight are Accounting and Finance, Revenue Management, Financial Reporting and Consolidation, Inventory, Procurement, Project Billing, Audit and Internal Controls, and more.

41. Explain Workday Human Capital Management

Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) is a cloud-based solution that assists global businesses of all sizes in various industry verticals with workforce planning and execution. Any changes that occur with business circumstances and requirements, including worker assignments, reporting, business process rules, etc., are immediately updated in the Workday HCM.

Workday Human Capital Management includes Human resource management, talent management, workforce planning, recruiting, payroll, time, project management, and more.

42. What is Workday Studio?

Workday Studio is an Integrated Eclipse-based environment that allows Workday customers and 3rd parties to create, deploy, debug, and support complex integrations running in the Workday Cloud. It is used to make modern combinations that utilize various reports and Workday Web Service (WWS).

[ Related Article: Workday Studio Tutorial ]

43. What are the types of reporting in Workday?

Workday reports can be categorized into two ways, one is standard, and another one is custom. Standard reports are developed and managed by Workday. Custom reports address the needs of the businesses.

44. What are the ways to create a report in Workday?

You can create a report in two ways in Workday:

• Run the Create Custom Report task.
• Copy a Workday Standard Report and modify it

45. If a particular report is shared within the organization, will anyone be able to see the same output while running the report with the same input values?

No, the output will depend on the security access to the data source of the individual who is running the report.

46. What are Calculated Fields?

 A calculated field is used for data manipulation. It is used in reporting, integrations, business processes, scheduling recurring processes, and other areas within Workday.

You should run the Create Calculated Field task to create calculated fields. Some of the essential things you can perform with Calculated Fields are currency conversion, lookup-related values, string or text manipulation, evaluation of an expression, format a date, etc.

47. How Workday reporting is different from other SQL ERP systems?

Workday follows an object-oriented relationship model. While creating a report in Workday, you can select a primary business object and a data source.

48. Name a few ways of how to access a Workday Standard Delivered Report?

The following are the ways to access Workday Standard Delivered Report:

• Browsing by Category in the Sitemap
• Writing the name of a specific report in the search bar.
• Running Workday Standard Reports 

49. What are the two types of security policies in Workday?

Business Process policies and Domain policies

50. What is the use of Domain Security Policies?

With domain security policies, you can modify which group can view or modify items in a report/task, or GET or PUT transactions from an integration.

51. How do you manage access to integrations?

You need to create an Integration System User and an Integration Security Group. Next, assign the Integration User to the Integration security group. Then finally, utilize that security group to add security policy access.

52. What prefix do you use to search for integrations?

 "Intsys:" is the prefix used for searching the integrations.

53. List out some Integration ID types.

• Workday ID
• External ID
• Reference ID

54. Why do you use XSLT in an integration?

XSLT is used for modifying input/output data going into an XML document.

55. What is a WSDL? 

Web Service Description Language is used to define how XML documents should be formatted to be accepted as input or determine the output of Workday Web Services.

56. Name the prefix that limits a search to reports?

"rd:" is used for limiting the search to reports.

57. Name some MVEL variables that you can use in Workday Studio?

• "lp" to access launch parameters.
• "vars" to access MessageContextVariables
• "props" to access message properties

58. How do you apply changes to security policies?

You need to run the Activate Pending Security Policy Changes to apply the security policy changes.

59. To modify security in Workday, what groups do you need to be a part of?

Security Configurator or Security Administrator.

60. Which Workday Studio component is used to translate a conditional if or a loop?

Route component is used to translate both conditional if or a loop depending on the routing strategy.

Visit here to learn Workday Training in Hyderabad

Most Common Workday FAQs

1. Is Workday a good career?

Workday meets the majority of the functionality needs of modern enterprise management solutions. As a result, Workday usage surged across enterprises, resulting in a large number of job possibilities for talented individuals. Candidates looking for a profession in finance or human resources can make a promising career in Workday.

2. What skills do you need to excel as a Workday HCM consultant?

To excel as a Workday HCM consultant, you must have a blend of hard and soft skills, including:

• Technical knowledge of the Workday platform
• Proficiency with computers
• Finance and human resource expertise
• Communication skills, both verbal and written
• Customer relationship management
• Analytical skills
• Time-management.

3. What skills help Workday HCM Consultants find jobs?

The following skills will help Workday HCM consultants find jobs easily:

• Human capital management (HCM)
• Human resources
• Workday
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Project management
• Payroll.

4. What does Workday Consultant do?

• Must be familiar with all aspects of the Workday HCM platform.
• Understand the specific needs of your clients.
• Design, develop, and test solutions to meet the needs of the client.
• Integrate and implement new Workday platform functionalities.
• Provide hands-on technical support and resolve open tickets in the ticket tracking system.

5. What are the roles & responsibilities of a Workday HCM Consultant?

• A workday HCM consultant is in charge of planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
• A workday consultant, with the support of the lead functional consultant, must collaborate closely with the client to understand requirements and design, develop, configure, and test the solution.
• Should be a hands-on subject matter expert in the Workday HCM suite, with the capacity to specialize and enhance their skill set in one or more functional areas.
• Develop strong and trustworthy relationships with other project team members, management, and external clients.

6. How can I get a job as a Workday HCM Consultant?

Take the following steps to become a Workday HCM consultant:

• Obtain a degree: To work as a Workday HCM consultant, you must have a bachelor's degree in finance, human resource management, or a similar field.
• Acquire relevant experience: Workday HCM experts usually come from backgrounds in human resources and consulting. While still a student, you can gain valuable experience in these professions by participating in internship and cooperative education programmes.
• Complete Workday HCM certification: To obtain your certification, you must first complete Workday training and gain appropriate platform experience.

[ Related Article: Workday HCM Modules ]

7. What are the job profiles that a Workday professional can look for?

• Workday Consultant
• Workday Architect
• Workday Manager
• Workday Analyst
• Workday Project Manager
• Workday Functional Consultant.

Tips to Prepare for Workday Interview

Workday Interview Preparation

• Be clear and confident: Make sure that any response you give during the interview is as clear as possible.
• Be honest about your knowledge: Be honest about whatever information you have or while explaining the points on your CV during the interview. If you don't comprehend a concept, be honest about it or explain why you haven't worked on it before. You can, however, express clearly that you would want to work on an idea with which you are unfamiliar or have never worked.
• Give some real-world examples: When answering, try to use some real-world examples. This shows the interviewer that you are well-versed in a particular concept.
• Discuss your multi-skills: In addition to Workday, present your other key knowledge/skills that you have earned in the past. This assures the interviewer that you are a suitable candidate to proceed with because your multi-skills will give you an advantage over other candidates.
• Research the company: Learn everything there is to know about the organization. Customize your responses to the demands of the company.
• Review the job specifications: Check the responsibilities of the role. Include at least one example from your previous experience that corresponds to the standards given. When the interviewer brings up the criterion, you'll be ready with an example.

Conclusion

So now, you have an idea of possible Workday interview questions you could come across. You may not be explicitly asked these questions in exactly these words in your interview, but having answers in mind for them makes you more prepared for anything that the interviewer throws your way.

To master advanced concepts of Workday, join our comprehensive Workday Course, which equips you with the necessary skills and more that you need and help you become job-ready upon completion.