Faculty Hiring: Requesting Reference Letters/Recommendations

Full-time Faculty Searches

For all full-time faculty searches, either the Dean or the Department Chair (as a Recruiting Coordinator) can create the job requisition. All full-time faculty positions should be created in the Dean's supervisory organization, regardless of who creates the job requisition. The "Create Job Requisition" task will auto-populate your own name if a supervisory organization exists, but you must change it to reflect the Dean and College:

For existing positions, you may need to unfreeze the position prior to creating the requisition. Find information on that process in the "Related Articles" section. Department chairs/Recruiting Coordinators have access to the report that lists all open and frozen positions within the college as well as the ability to unfreeze positions in the College/School.

Reference Letters / Letters of Recommendation

You can request letters of recommendation for faculty positions. Please note that staff positions do not have this option, and phone references do not need to be logged/recorded in Workday. This is the last stage before an offer is made - you should only move candidates to this step if they have completed any required screening or interviews and you are considering making an offer to this candidate.

1. Once you move a candidate to the "Reference Letter" stage, they will automatically receive an email and a task on their candidate home page requesting they add 3 references (please communicate directly with the candidate if they should add more than 3, as this is the default request in Workday):
   • Candidates will be asked to add reference names, email, phone, and relationship type (such as colleague, former supervisor, etc).
   • Candidate task/view:
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2. Once the candidate uploads their references, the references will receive an email with a link, prompting them to a page that will tell them the name of the candidate and the job description they applied to. At the bottom of that page, they will also see the reference request. If they choose "Yes", they are able to upload their own reference document:
   • Top of the reference task:
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   • Bottom of the task and full request:
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3. As soon as you send the reference letter request, the hiring manager and Primary Recruiter will receive an inbox task. You can review the list of references, monitor whether the references have been submitted successfully, or easily resend the reference request to an individual from your inbox:
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4. To review the letters, you will need to go to the candidate profile. Click on "Screening" in the gray sidebar, then click on the "References" tab at the top. You will see the full list of references, their status (submitted or not submitted), and a link to review the actual reference:
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5. Once you have received and reviewed the references, you can submit the "Manage References" task and you will receive the candidate's profile to make a decision to move them forward or decline them. You can move them forward either to "Additional Interview", if you would like to interview them again or have other people they should meet prior to extending an offer, or you can select "Offer" to begin the offer request process.
   • Primary Recruiters can only submit the request to extend an offer. The Dean of each college will need to put in the offer details for any full-time faculty hires. The process will then be reviewed and approved by the HR, compensation, and budget teams, prior to being sent to the Provost's office for approval and final offer letter generation. The Dean will receive notification from HR outside of Workday when it is appropriate to extend the verbal offer.