System Configuration that Creates Hurdles

We talk a lot about “the system” being biased, but most of the time, what we call “the system” is just a set of human configuration decisions.

Today I hit an example that made that crystal clear.

I clicked “Easy Apply” on a Manager, Technical Support role in the US.
LinkedIn immediately popped up a generic “job search safety” warning. Annoying, but whatever.

Then I hit the application form and saw this:

Required field: upload a picture of yourself.

Not optional. Required.

I thought, “OK, maybe that is just LinkedIn being LinkedIn,” so I went to the company’s own careers site and found the same job there.

Same role. Same requirement: no photo, no application.

That is not an algorithm glitch. That is a conscious choice by humans to say:

“We will not even review you unless you give us a headshot first.”

For a US technical support manager role, there is no legitimate business reason to demand a photo at the application stage.

What it does do is:

• Make it easier to filter people in or out based on race, age, gender, disability, and other protected characteristics before anyone has to read a single bullet of experience.
• Bake bias into the very first step of the process and then pretend the rest of the funnel is somehow “objective.”

HR and I/O psychology folks have been saying this for years: stop asking for photos on applications unless you are literally casting a visual role (and even then, be thoughtful).

And it is the same story with ATS platforms like Workday, just in a different costume.

Workday, itself, is not the problem. The core platform can support decent candidate experiences. The way it is usually configured creates an exhausting, exclusionary, and risky experience:

• Most companies spin up their own Workday instance and force you to create a brand‑new account just to apply.
• The thing is, Workday does support better patterns. I have applied to a handful of roles where:
  • I could apply entirely as a guest,
  • Or complete the application first and make account creation optional at the end (“create an account to save your info”),
  • Or use a Google sign‑in to create/login to an account instead of yet another username/password combo.
• So when I am forced to make a full new login for the hundredth time, that is not a platform limitation. It is a conscious decision to maximize friction and data capture, not candidate experience.

And it is not just accounts. It is also how people configure searches and filters:

• We have all seen job board or ATS posts where the recruiter is using Boolean searches in ways that appear to be misconfigured – chaining every requirement together with AND instead of using thoughtful OR logic, or building strings so tight that only a unicorn profile will ever appear.
• Then they turn around and say “we are not seeing enough qualified candidates” when the reality is that their own search logic is excluding perfectly good people who are one title, one keyword, or one tool away from the “ideal.”

It is also a security and privacy problem:

• For candidates who have applied widely, this “new account for every tenant” pattern can easily turn into hundreds or thousands of separate Workday logins scattered across the internet.
• Every one of those accounts is another place where your data can be breached, mishandled, or forgotten about until it shows up in the next identity‑theft notification.

Here is the part where the platform itself could do better:

• Workday could make guest apply + optional account creation + SSO (Google, etc.) the default.
• If those were the defaults, any company that wanted the high‑friction, high‑risk version would have to go in and change the settings on purpose, looking straight at what they are doing to other humans.

Right now, the defaults drag everyone toward the worst‑case configuration, and only a few thoughtful teams bother to fix it.

On top of that, many instances are configured with:

• Hard degree requirements with no “or equivalent experience,”
• Brittle keyword screens that reject you if your title does not match their internal label,
• Compensation filters that silently discard you if your expected range is above a hidden ceiling.

Candidates experience that as:

• “I never even make it to a human.”
• “I feel invisible and unhireable in these systems.”

They are not being dramatic. They are describing the direct outcome of those configuration choices.

The platform is capable of guest apply.
The platform is capable of optional accounts and Google SSO.
The platform is capable of flexible degree/experience rules.

If you are not using any of that, that is on you, not “the system.”

So if you work in HR, recruiting, or as a hiring manager:

• Stop asking for photos in applications for non‑visual roles. There is no defensible reason to do that in the US, and you know exactly what it enables.
• Stop hiding behind “the ATS did it.” The ATS did exactly what someone told it to do when they checked those boxes, wrote those filters, and built those Boolean strings.
• Push your vendors to set humane, low‑risk defaults, and then leave them that way unless you have a truly compelling reason to deviate.
• Configure Workday (or whatever you use) for minimum friction, maximum fairness and security: guest apply, optional account creation, Google SSO, “or equivalent experience” where it makes sense, and fewer brittle keyword gates.
• Treat configuration as an ethical decision, not just an efficiency decision.

For my part:

• When your application process requires a headshot for a technical role in the US, I am out.
• When your Workday instance makes me spin up yet another account, I am out.
• And when you quietly create a hundred different login surfaces for my data with no clear way to clean them up, I assume you are not taking my privacy or security seriously.

If you need my face and a full new login before you will even consider my track record in support and leadership, that is not a place I can trust with the rest of me.