An active candidate has submitted an application to a job requisition. The submitted application establishes the active candidate relationship and places the person into the Job Application business process for consideration against that requisition.

A referral identifies a potential candidate but does not mean the individual has applied. An invitation to apply is an outreach action; the recipient remains a prospect until an application is submitted. Introduce Yourself creates or updates a prospect relationship without associating the person with a specific job application. These distinctions affect reporting, security, communications, retention, and which recruiting business processes are available.

The same person can have prospect activity and one or more active applications. “Active” in this context describes the candidate’s application relationship rather than whether a recruiter recently contacted the person or whether the candidate record is generally searchable. Once the application is submitted, Workday can route it through Review, Screen, Interview, Offer, and other configured stages. Study Guide reference: Configure Recruiting Functionality — Prospects Versus Active Candidates, Applications, Referrals, Invitations to Apply, and Introduce Yourself . Workday distinguishes prospects from applicants and processes submitted applications through its unified recruiting platform. Workday Recruiting datasheet