Applying on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and Workday: what to expect

Look at the address bar after clicking Apply:

Many companies embed these forms in their own careers page, so the URL is the most reliable clue.

In our own index, of the 483 newest remote developer postings, 9% are on Ashby, 9% are on Greenhouse, 5% are on SmartRecruiters, 3% are on Workday and <1% are on Lever. That reflects which employer boards we read as much as the market, so treat it as a rough guide; the rest come from other systems and job boards.

A Greenhouse application is a single page: name, email, phone, location, a CV upload (or paste), an optional cover letter, LinkedIn and website links, then the employer's own questions. US employers usually add a voluntary self-identification section (gender, race and ethnicity, veteran and disability status) that you can decline to answer; it's kept separate from the hiring decision.

• Custom questions are the real screen. Work authorization, sponsorship, notice period, salary expectations and "why us" are common, and some are knockouts. Read each one; don't rush them.
• Upload a clean PDF. Greenhouse stores the file you send and shows it to the recruiter as-is.
• Optional autofill. Greenhouse offers job seekers a MyGreenhouse profile with an "Autofill with Greenhouse" option on Greenhouse-hosted forms (MyGreenhouse). Check every field it fills.
• Long free-text questions often have a character limit that isn't shown until you exceed it. Draft longer answers elsewhere first.

Lever's form is usually the shortest: attach your CV, then full name, email, phone, current company, links and an "Additional information" box, followed by any custom questions and, for US roles, the voluntary demographic survey. The CV upload often pre-fills the contact fields.

• Check the pre-filled fields. Parsers sometimes put your previous employer in "Current company" or mangle a phone number.
• Use "Additional information" well. Three sentences on why this role and your work status beat leaving it empty or pasting a full cover letter.
• Note the posting ID. Lever URLs include it, which makes follow-ups and tracking easier.

Ashby is common at fast-growing startups. Its forms start with an "Autofill from resume" option that parses your CV and fills the contact and profile fields, followed by the employer's structured questions (dropdowns, yes/no and short text) and sometimes a voluntary demographic section.

• Autofill can overwrite. If you've typed answers first, autofill may replace them. Upload first, then edit.
• Structured questions are often scored. Answer yes/no questions literally; if "Do you have 5+ years of Go?" is a no, say no and explain in a free-text field if there is one.
• Location fields matter. Ashby forms often ask for your location and work authorization explicitly. If the role has a country rule, this is where it's applied.

Workday is the one people dread, for good reasons. Each employer runs its own Workday site, so you create a separate candidate account (email and password, sometimes email verification) for every company. Then you choose between "Autofill with Resume", "Apply Manually" or, on a returning visit, "Use My Last Application", and work through several pages:

1. My Information: name, address, phone, how you heard about the job.
2. My Experience: every job and degree as separate entries, plus skills, links and the CV upload.
3. Application Questions: the employer's screening questions, including work authorization and sponsorship.
4. Voluntary Disclosures and Self Identify: demographic and disability questions (optional; you can decline).
5. Review, then Submit.

How to make Workday less painful:

• Use a password manager and the same email everywhere. You will be back to check status.
• "Autofill with Resume" is a starting point. It often splits one job into two, merges bullets or gets dates wrong. Fix each entry; recruiters read these fields, not only the attached file.
• Keep a plain-text copy of your experience (titles, employers, dates as MM/YYYY, 3–5 bullets each) to paste from.
• Save as you go. Sessions time out; long free-text answers are safest drafted elsewhere.

The same questions come up on every system. Write your answers once and reuse them:

• Work authorization and sponsorship, per country you might apply in ("EU citizen; no sponsorship needed in the EU; would need sponsorship for the US").
• Current location, time zone and the hours you can overlap.
• Notice period and earliest start date.
• Salary expectation as a range, in the currency the employer uses.
• Links: LinkedIn, GitHub or portfolio, personal site.
• A two-sentence "why this company" you adapt each time (the part that can't be reused wholesale).

And check the CV itself against the job before you upload it: the free CV score checker shows which of the ad's keywords your CV covers, which is what the recruiter will search for once your application is in their system.

Before spending twenty minutes on a Workday form, make sure the job can actually hire you: our remote eligibility checker tells you in seconds if a remote ad is US-only, EU-only or open worldwide.

Browser autofill tools can save a lot of typing on these forms. Two rules keep them safe. First, you should review everything and press Submit yourself: an application sent with a wrong date or a mis-parsed title is worse than a slow one. Second, demographic and EEO questions should never be answered for you; those are your decision each time.

That's how our free Chrome extension works on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, Workable, SmartRecruiters and iCIMS: it fills the repetitive fields from your profile, leaves voluntary disclosures alone, and never submits. You check the form and click Submit.

Expect an automatic confirmation email; save it, since it's often the only record of which CV you sent. Workday shows status in the employer's candidate home, while Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby communicate by email. A status like "In review" can stay unchanged for weeks without meaning anything. In Huntr's Q2 2026 data, the median time from application to a recorded interview was six days, so if you've heard nothing after two or three weeks, a short, polite follow-up to the recruiter is reasonable.

Applications sent through an employer's own career site or ATS also had higher recorded interview rates in that data (6.42% and 5.29%) than those sent via job boards (3.82%), one more reason to apply on the employer's form rather than a board's quick-apply button.