Every field on a Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and Workday application — and what to put in it

Four systems cover most of the roles you will apply to at companies hiring internationally: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and Workday, with SmartRecruiters close behind. Their forms ask broadly the same things in different orders and at wildly different lengths.

This is what each field is for, who reads it, and what a good answer looks like.

First, the shape of each system

Greenhouse — usually one page. Contact details, résumé upload, optional cover letter, a handful of custom questions the employer wrote, then the voluntary demographic section. Ten minutes at most.

Lever — also one page, similar length, usually with a general "additional information" box at the end and links for your LinkedIn, GitHub or portfolio.

Ashby — one page, but employers tend to use more structured questions: dropdowns for location and work authorisation, specific short-answer boxes instead of a general cover letter.

SmartRecruiters — one page, sometimes with an optional account so you can reuse your details.

Workday — the long one. You create an account with that specific employer (a Workday tenant is per-company, so your Adobe account does not work at Salesforce), then walk through several screens: My Information, My Experience, Application Questions, Voluntary Disclosures, Self Identify, Review. It will offer to parse your résumé into the experience section, and you will spend most of your time correcting what it got wrong.

The universal fields

Name, email, phone

Use the same name across every application at a company, including in the résumé file. Recruiters and interviewers search by name; two variants create two records.

Phone number in full international format (+49 …, +1 …). A number the wrong side of a country code is a real reason people fail to reach you.

Email: something you check, that does not bounce, and that you can still access in six months. If you are using our service, replies from employers arrive on a forwarding address that lands in your inbox as well as being parsed for status changes — but the address on the application is still yours.

Location

Say where you are, not where you want to be. "Berlin, Germany" is a fact; "Berlin / Remote / open to relocation" in the city field breaks their filters and reads as evasive. If relocation is the point, say so in the cover letter or the additional-information box, where a human reads it.

For remote roles, employers often need to know your country for tax and employment reasons. Answer the country question truthfully even if the role is advertised as "remote anywhere" — "anywhere" almost always means "anywhere we already have an entity".

Résumé upload

One file, PDF, named Firstname-Lastname-Role.pdf or similar. Not resume_final_v3(2).pdf. Single column, no text in headers or footers, no skill-rating graphics.

If the system parses your résumé into fields and gets something wrong, fix it. The parsed version is what is searchable later; the PDF is what a human opens. Both need to be right.

Cover letter

Usually optional in Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, usually genuinely optional. Where you write one, write six to eight sentences that could only have been written about this role: what they are building, why the problem is interesting to you specifically, and the one or two things in your background that map onto it.

Skip anything that could appear in any other letter. "I am a passionate, results-driven professional" is invisible ink.

LinkedIn, GitHub, portfolio, website

Fill in the ones that exist and are current. An abandoned GitHub with three forked repos does nothing for you; leave it blank rather than inviting the click. If your portfolio is behind a password, put the password in the field with the link.

The questions that actually filter

Work authorisation and sponsorship

Two questions that look similar and mean opposite things:

• Are you legally authorised to work in [country]? — Do you have the right to work there now, without the employer doing anything.
• Will you now or in the future require sponsorship for employment visa status? — Will the employer ever need to sponsor you, including when your current permit expires.

The trap is answering "no" to the second one when you are on a permit that will need renewal or transfer with a change of employer. Answer both as they truly are. These answers get checked before an offer, and a mismatch found late costs you the offer and the reference.

If your situation does not fit the two boxes — you have a visa that transfers freely, or a working-holiday permit with a known expiry date — say so in one line in the free-text box. Recruiters deal with this constantly and would rather know now.

Years of experience / minimum requirements

Count real, paid, relevant experience. Rounding two years and eight months up to three is normal. Turning eighteen months into "3+" is the kind of thing that surfaces in an interview and ends it.

Salary expectations

Where the field is free text and you are early in the process, a range with a basis is the strongest answer: "€75,000–85,000 base, depending on scope and total package." Where a single number is forced, give a number you would actually accept at the bottom of your range, because you will not get more than you ask for and you may get exactly this.

Where the law in that jurisdiction requires the employer to publish a range, and they have, anchor inside their range rather than inventing your own.

Refusing to answer ("negotiable") is legal and sometimes advised, but in a form with a required field it just reads as friction.

Notice period / availability

State it plainly: "Available immediately", "One month's notice", "Three months' notice, negotiable to two." A long notice period is a fact, not a defect, and it is much better raised now than after four interview rounds.

"How did you hear about us?"

Low stakes, but not zero: employers use it to judge which channels work, and "Referred by [name]" in this box does actually get followed up. If someone at the company suggested you apply, this is where to say so.

The voluntary sections

EEO / demographic questions (US), diversity monitoring (UK/EU)

Race, gender, veteran status, disability status. In every major system these are voluntary, stored separately, and not shown to the hiring team on your application. They are used for aggregate reporting.

Answering or declining has no effect on your application. "I decline to self-identify" is always an available option and is not held against you.

Self-identification of disability (US form CC-305)

A specific US federal form with its own wording. Same rules: voluntary, separate, aggregate.

The free-text boxes that get read

Employer-written questions are where a small company's recruiter often starts. Common ones and what a good answer does:

"Why do you want to work here?" — Show you have used or understood the product. One concrete detail beats a paragraph of admiration. Two to four sentences.

"Tell us about a project you are proud of." — Situation, what you did, what changed as a result, with one number if you have one. Six sentences, not sixty.

"What is your experience with [technology]?" — Be exact about depth. "Two years, primary language on a payments service handling ~2k requests/second" is worth more than "expert".

"Anything else we should know?" — Use it if you have a real thing to say: relocation plans, a career gap, an unusual visa position, a portfolio piece that is directly relevant. Otherwise leave it empty. An empty box costs nothing; a padded one costs you attention.

Workday specifics

Because it will take you longest:

• Create the account with an email you keep. You will get status updates and interview scheduling through it, at that employer only.
• Let it parse the résumé, then fix everything. Dates, employer names and titles come out wrong often enough that reviewing them is not optional.
• "My Experience" wants employment history, not achievements. Keep bullets short here; your résumé is attached for the detail.
• Save as you go. Sessions expire, and a Workday form is not something you want to fill in twice.
• Expect the "create a password" step to be per company. Use a password manager; you will have a dozen of these by the end of a search.

The general rule

Every field is either a filter, a search key, or something a person reads. Filters want the truth. Search keys want consistency. The boxes a person reads want specificity and brevity.

Nothing on the form rewards padding, and several fields punish it.