How candidates apply

Applying takes about two minutes on a phone, and candidates don't need an account. The same form is used on your hosted career pages and in the apply form of the Careers SDK on your own website.

What the form asks

Name and email address are always asked. Everything else follows the job's application form: the CV, phone, cover letter, LinkedIn or portfolio, where the candidate lives, salary expectation, earliest start date and your own questions. Each of these can be required, optional or left out. Optional fields are marked as optional, so candidates know they can skip them.

The CV fills in the form

Candidates choose their CV first. It must be a PDF or Word (.docx) file of up to 10 MB. As soon as they choose it, their browser reads the file and fills in their name, email address and phone number where it finds them, and says so above the form. Nothing is sent before they choose Send application, and they can change anything that was filled in.

This works with most CVs made in Word, Pages or Google Docs. Scanned CVs and some designed PDFs give no text, and the form simply stays empty.

Privacy and the talent pool

Before sending, candidates agree to your privacy notice. They can open it from the form, and the application records which version they saw. If you publish a new version while someone has the form open, they are asked to reload the page and read it again.

Candidates can also tick a box to keep their details for future jobs. That puts them in your talent pool with their consent recorded. Without the tick, their details are only used for this job.

If you send text messages, candidates can also agree to get messages about their application by SMS or WhatsApp at the phone number they gave. They can reply STOP at any time. See SMS and WhatsApp.

Screening questions

Yes or no and choice questions can name answers that don't fit the job, such as No to "Do you hold a first aid certificate?". Such answers are flagged on the application for the hiring team. Careers Orbit never rejects anyone because of them; a person always decides.

After sending

The candidate sees a thank-you message and gets a confirmation email in your name, with your logo and colour, in the language they applied in. The hiring team gets a notification in Orbit's bell, and the application waits in the first stage of the job's pipeline.

Applying twice

If someone applies again to the same job with the same email address, their first application is updated with what they sent, and the confirmation says so. They don't need to upload their CV again. Applying to a different job makes a new application for the same candidate.

Where an application came from

Applications from your hosted pages are marked as coming from your career site. Add ?utm_source= to a job link you share, such as ?utm_source=instagram, and applications through that link are marked with that source instead. If the link also has utm_medium or utm_campaign, the candidate's profile shows them next to the source.