Every message on this page was captured on real Workday employer sites between 10 September and 18 October 2026, while tracing application sessions without submitting them. Employers configure their own forms, so a field required at one company can be optional at another.
Start with the “Errors Found” box.
When a page will not save, Workday shows an “Errors Found” box above the form. Each entry names the field and the problem, for example “Phone Number: Enter a valid format for Phone Number.” Fix them from the top, then press Save and Continue once more. If a long answer is on the page, copy it somewhere safe before you start changing fields.
“Enter a valid format for Phone Number.”
We saw this message on three different employers’ sites. Every time it appeared, the Phone Number box started with a plus sign and the country code, such as +91 and then the number. Every time the box held only the national number, with the country chosen in Country Phone Code, the error was gone. A space inside the number did not cause it.
- Choose the country in Country Phone Code, for example India (+91).
- Type the national number only in Phone Number, without the plus sign or country code.
- Choose a Phone Device Type if the employer requires one.
- Leave Phone Extension empty unless you are giving an office extension.
Watch for this after Autofill with Resume. At one employer it copied the number from the resume into the box with the country code still attached. The step-by-step Workday guide shows where each phone field sits.
“No Items.” in Skills, School and other search boxes.
Skills, School, Field of Study, Country Phone Code and How Did You Hear About Us are search boxes, not ordinary text fields. On the sites we tested, typing alone left the list empty or unfiltered. Pressing Enter ran the search.
- Type, press Enter, then choose. Wait for the results before clicking.
- Watch for automatic picks. When the search finds exactly one match, Enter can select it immediately. Check the chip that appears; a partial country name once selected the wrong country code.
- Do not click a skill that is already selected. Results you have already chosen show as checked, and clicking one again removes it.
- Read the result before you pick it. A search for “mongo” returned MonetDB and even a language entry alongside MongoDB.
Search the short name; Workday stores the long one.
Workday’s skill catalog rarely uses the bare word. These are the entries one employer’s catalog returned for common searches:
| You search | Catalog entry to choose |
|---|---|
python | Python (Programming Language) |
sql | Structured Query Language (SQL) |
aws | Amazon Web Services (AWS) |
docker | Docker (Software) |
react | React.js |
c++ | C++ Programming Language |
c# | C Sharp (Programming Language) |
nginx | Nginx Web Server (NGINX Plus is a different product) |
Loose matching picks the wrong entry. When we compared two ways of matching skills on 33 real catalog searches, a loose word-overlap rule chose a wrong entry three times: NGINX Plus for Nginx, and “C (Programming Language)” for both C++ and C#. A strict rule that accepts only the same name, the name before a bracket, the abbreviation inside a bracket, or the “.js” form chose 21 correctly, none wrongly, and left 12 empty. Six of those twelve skills were simply not in the catalog. An empty skill costs you a few seconds; a wrong one puts something you do not have on your application.
Your school is not in the list.
Workday’s tenant setup documentation says each employer maintains its own school list. When the lookup is on, applicants cannot add a school that is not listed, and employers may provide an entry for unavailable schools. One employer’s list mixed “National Institute of Technology, Durgapur”, “NIT-Warangal” and lower-case entries, so search more than one way.
- Search the official name, then a short form or abbreviation, then the city or campus.
- Press Enter after each search.
- If nothing matches, choose the employer’s “Other”, “School Unavailable” or “Not Listed” entry if it has one, and keep the real name on your resume.
- If no such entry exists, contact the employer’s candidate support instead of choosing a different school.
“The field … is required and must have a value.”
This message names a required field that is still empty. These are the ones we captured:
| Field in the message | Page | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| State | My Information | Choose your state or region from the list. Autofill with Resume left it empty at one employer. |
| Postal Code | My Information | Enter your postal or PIN code, even if your resume shows only a city. |
| Phone Device Type | My Information | Choose Mobile, Home or the type that matches the number. |
| From / To | My Experience | Enter the month and year for each job. For your current job, tick “I currently work here” instead of a To date. |
| Role Description | My Experience | Add a short plain-text summary of the role. Some employers require it for every job. |
| Upload a file (5MB max) | My Experience | Attach your resume in the format the field lists, under the size limit. |
| What is your gender? | Voluntary Disclosures | Choose an answer. If the list includes a “decline to self-identify” option, that is a valid choice. |
Employer questions can also be required, for example whether you have worked for the company or its subsidiaries before. Answer for the full group of companies the question names. If the required field is a resume upload that keeps failing, the resume upload guide covers file type, size and filename problems.
When the page still will not save.
Reload once, sign in again and retry. If the same error returns, take a screenshot of the Errors Found box, note the job ID, the field and the time, and contact the employer’s candidate support from their careers site. Avoid creating a second account for the same employer; it can split your application history.
Workday error questions people ask.
On the employer sites we tested, the message appeared whenever the Phone Number box contained the country code, such as +91 followed by the number. It cleared when the box held only the national number and the country was chosen in the separate Country Phone Code box.
Workday’s search boxes run the search when you press Enter. Typing alone can leave “No Items.” on screen. Type the skill, press Enter, wait for the list, then select the matching entry.
Search for other spellings, abbreviations and the campus name first. If it is still missing, choose the employer’s own “Other”, “School Unavailable” or “Not Listed” option if one exists. Workday’s documentation says employers maintain their own school lists, and applicants cannot add an unlisted school when the lookup is switched on.
It names a required field that is still empty, so the page cannot be saved. Find the field named in the message, fill it, and press Save and Continue again.
No. In one employer’s catalog, tools such as Tailwind CSS, BullMQ, Zustand and TanStack Query returned no matching entry. Add the skills that exist in the list and mention the rest in your resume or role descriptions.