Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby: an applicant's guide

Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby: these are four of the systems employers use to take applications. To see which one you are on, look at the address bar when the application form opens.

• Lever: hosted job sites are at jobs.lever.co/ followed by the company's name.^[5]
• Ashby: job boards are at jobs.ashbyhq.com/ followed by the board's name.^[8]
• Workday: the employer has its own Workday site. Ohio State University's, for example, is at osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com.^[7]
• Greenhouse: the address contains greenhouse.io, as its candidate portal my.greenhouse.io does,^[1] or the form is built into the employer's own site.

Knowing the system will not change your odds. It tells you what the next ten minutes will be like.

There are two different codes, and both are normal.

The first is for MyGreenhouse, a candidate portal where you can find jobs at companies that use Greenhouse, apply, and track applications. It has no password. You enter your email and it sends a single-use code.^[1] Its Quick Apply feature fills Greenhouse-hosted forms from the details you saved, and you can change them before you submit.^[2] Do you need a MyGreenhouse account to apply through Greenhouse? Greenhouse's help pages do not say that you do. They present it as a way to save typing.

The second is spam protection. Greenhouse uses Google's reCAPTCHA on job posts, and its documentation says that in some cases a user may be asked to submit a code from their email to verify their identity. Stricter settings chosen by the employer add more of this friction.^[3] So keep your inbox open while you apply, and use an email address you can reach right then.

On status updates, MyGreenhouse shows them only if the hiring company chooses to share them.^[1] An empty status page does not mean no.

Because each employer runs its own Workday site. Workday's own help page says that to reach an account you need the link to your company's unique sign-in page, and that for questions about job applications you need to contact the organisation, because Workday cannot give direct help.^[6] Ohio State's applicant FAQ shows what that looks like in practice: you sign in on its Workday site with the email and password you created there, and check your status under Candidate Home.^[7]

It feels as if one company called Workday keeps making you sign up. In practice you are signing up with each employer separately, on that employer's own site.

What follows from that:

• Use a password manager. You may end up with a dozen Workday logins.
• Use the same email address every time, so your records are easy to find.
• For a locked account, use the reset link on that employer's sign-in page, or contact that employer.

Ashby offers employers an AI-assisted application review. The employer writes criteria, the tool marks each one as met or not met with the part of your resume it relied on, and Ashby says "it is up to the reviewer to advance or reject".^[9] That is the vendor's account of its own product, and an employer has to switch it on. What you can take from it: the criteria come from the job description, so the plain facts on your resume matter more than its design.

Lever publishes how its postings work. Published postings are publicly viewable, and an application needs your name and email at minimum, with the resume, phone and links alongside. Lever emails you a confirmation unless the employer has switched that off.^[5] If no confirmation arrives, it may be the employer's setting. Make a note of the date yourself.

The employer sets it up. The questions on the form, which answers disqualify you, and who reads the applications are the employer's choices, not the software's. Greenhouse, for one, documents a feature that rejects an applicant automatically based on their answer to a question the employer picked.^[4] Treat screening questions on any system as the part that counts most.

The same goes for length. A short form does not mean a careless employer, and a long one does not mean a serious one. Each employer decides how much to ask.

And none of them will chase the employer for you. Keeping track is your job.

1. Keep one plain document with your details: addresses, dates, job titles, links. You will paste from it on every system.
2. Set up a password manager before your next Workday application.
3. Apply with your email open in another tab, ready for a code.
4. Read every screening question twice before you answer.
5. Log each application: date, employer, system, and whether a confirmation arrived.