Greenhouse is the hiring system behind a large share of technology and startup postings, and its form is the simplest of the big ones. One page. You upload a resume, it fills the name and contact fields from the parse, you check them, answer the employer's custom questions, answer or decline the voluntary demographic questions, and press submit. A confirmation email arrives within a minute. The things that go wrong are the parse putting your name in the wrong field, a custom question you did not expect, and a security code that does not arrive.
Key points
- The address is
boards.greenhouse.io/companyorjob-boards.greenhouse.io/company, or the company's own domain with a Greenhouse form in it. - No account. Each application is standalone, and reapplying is a new form.
- The resume upload fills the fields. Check every one. The parse is good and not perfect.
- Custom questions are the employer's. Read them before you start, so you have the answers ready.
- A confirmation email is the proof. No email within ten minutes means it did not go through.
The form
| Section | What it asks | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Resume | Upload a PDF or Word file, or paste text | The file is the tailored copy, not the master |
| Contact | First name, last name, email, phone | The parse sometimes swaps names or picks an old email |
| Location | City, sometimes country | Match the posting's location if it is a remote role with a limit |
| Cover letter | Upload or paste, often optional | Attach it when you have one. Nobody reads a pasted one worse than an uploaded one. |
| Links | LinkedIn, website, portfolio | Portfolio for design roles. Leave the rest empty if empty. |
| Education | School, degree, dates | Often prefilled from the parse |
| Custom questions | The employer's own: work authorisation, salary, a short answer or two | Written in advance, in a text file, pasted in |
| Voluntary questions | Gender, race, veteran, disability | Optional. Decline is an answer. Not seen by the hiring manager. |
The resume fills the form. You still read the form.
Before you start
Open the form and read the custom questions first. Some employers ask for a short answer, "why this role" or "tell us about a project", and those are letters in a box. Write them in a text file, in the shape the guide on cover letters gives, then paste. A form that times out loses what you typed in the box, and Greenhouse forms do time out after a long idle.
Have the tailored resume exported and named. The guide on tailoring has the fifteen minutes, and the file name is for the recruiter's download folder.
The parse
When you upload the resume, Greenhouse reads it and fills the contact and education fields. It does this well for a one-column resume with plain headings, and badly for the two-column ones. The guide on ATS-friendly resumes has the rules. Whatever it fills, read: a swapped first and last name is common, and so is an old email address pulled from an earlier role's bullet.
The security code
Some Greenhouse forms send a code to your email before you can submit, to confirm the address. The code arrives within a minute from a Greenhouse address. If it does not, check spam, then request a new one. A code that never arrives is almost always a typo in the email field, which is the one field that matters most.
After you submit
A confirmation email from the employer, through Greenhouse, within minutes. It is the only confirmation you get. There is no candidate portal to log into and no status page. The status lives with the recruiter, and the guide on how long until you hear back has the timelines.
If you need to withdraw, reply to the confirmation email, or email the recruiter named on the posting. There is no button.
Reapplying
No account means no history on your side. The employer's side keeps your record, and a second application to the same company attaches to it. Applying to two roles at one company is fine and visible to the recruiter, who sees both.
On this site
Tailor rewrites your resume and cover letter against the posting before you open the form, so the words you paste in are the ones the posting used. When you send it, add the row in Track, with the ATS score you sent it at. We do not fill the form for you: the pledge on this site says we will not apply on your behalf.
Questions
Can I save and come back?
No. The form is one page and one session. Write the long answers outside it.
The form has no resume upload. Is that normal?
Some employers ask for a LinkedIn profile instead. It is their choice, and a resume is still better. Look for a "paste" option, and if there is none, the link is what they want.
Does it matter whether I upload PDF or Word?
No. Both parse. PDF keeps the layout you chose.
My application shows no confirmation. Did it fail?
Check spam for a mail from the employer via Greenhouse. If nothing arrives in ten minutes, it did not go through, and applying again is safe. The duplicate is on their side, and they see which one has the timestamp.
What are the voluntary questions for?
Equal opportunity reporting, by law in the US. The answers are stored apart from the application and are not shown to the people deciding. Declining is normal.