You're partway through a Workday application. You reach the degree field, open the dropdown, and your degree isn't there. No "Computer Science." No "B.S." Nothing that matches what your diploma actually says. Or you type it and the search returns nothing.
This stops a lot of applicants cold, because it feels like you have to either lie or give up. You don't. Here's what's actually happening and what to select.
Why your degree isn't in the list
Workday splits your education into two separate fields, and each is matched against a company-specific list:
- Degree — the type of credential: Bachelor's, Master's, Associate, Doctorate. Stored as "B.S.", "Bachelor of Science", "Bachelor's Degree", or similar, depending on the company.
- Field of Study — your major: Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Marketing.
The confusion usually comes from expecting to find "B.S. Computer Science" as one entry. It's almost never one entry — it's a degree type plus a separate major. So if you're searching the degree dropdown for "Computer Science," you'll find nothing, because Computer Science is a field of study, not a degree.
Every company maintains its own version of both lists, so the exact wording — and which majors even exist — varies from one application to the next.
What to select for the degree field
The degree field wants the level of your credential, not your major. Match to the type:
- Bachelor's (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) → search "bachelor"
- Master's (M.A., M.S., MBA, etc.) → search "master"
- Associate → search "associate"
- Doctorate (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) → search "doctor" or "ph"
- High school diploma / GED → search "high school" or "GED"
Pick the company's wording for your level. "B.S." and "Bachelor of Science" are the same thing — choose whichever variant their list offers. The label needs to match their list, not your diploma verbatim.
Then handle your major in the Field of Study field
Your actual major — Computer Science, Finance, Nursing — goes in Field of Study, a separate dropdown. If your major isn't listed there either, that's a common and separate problem we cover in detail here: What to do when your field of study isn't listed in Workday.
Short version: search a single word, try word-order and "and"/"&" variants, and if your exact major genuinely isn't there, pick the closest parent discipline (a Computer Science degree filed under "Computer and Information Science" is completely fine). Never leave it blank — an empty field is invisible to recruiter filters.
"The application says I don't have a Computer Science degree"
If a Workday posting is screening you out for not having a specific degree, two different things can be going on:
- A hard requirement. Some postings genuinely gate on a degree or field. If you have the equivalent under a different name (say your major is "Computing" or "Software Engineering" rather than "Computer Science"), make sure you've selected the closest matching field of study — the screen may be checking the structured value, not your resume text.
- A parsing miss. If you do have the degree but the form didn't register it, it's usually because your education saved as freeform text instead of a matched dropdown value — so the automated check can't see it. Delete the education entry and re-add it, selecting real dropdown results for both degree and field.
Degree still not there? Your options
If you've matched the level correctly and it still won't fit:
- Choose the nearest degree type — every real credential maps to one of Bachelor's / Master's / Associate / Doctorate / High School. There is almost always a correct level, even when the exact label is missing.
- Use "Other" only as a last resort, and make sure your resume states the degree plainly so the human reviewer sees it.
- Remember the split: if you're stuck, double-check you're not searching the degree box for your major, or vice versa. It's the single most common reason "my degree isn't listed."
Why this matters
When your degree and field match the company's lists, your education is stored as structured data that recruiter filters and automated screens can read. When they don't match, it saves as text those filters never surface — so a recruiter searching for "Bachelor's, Computer Science" may never see a perfectly qualified candidate. Getting the dropdowns right is what makes your degree count.
How ZippyElf helps
ZippyElf maintains the actual degree and field-of-study lists for companies that use Workday. Upload your resume, paste the job URL, and we hand you your education matched to the exact degree and field values that company's portal expects — no dropdown guesswork.