How to fill Lever and Ashby job applications
What Lever and Ashby application forms ask, why they are short, how Lever reads your resume, which links and answers recruiters read, and what happens next.
Short answerLever and Ashby applications are one page with no account. Attach your resume first; Lever reads it and fills your name and contact details, which you should then check. Fill current company, location and your LinkedIn and portfolio links, and answer the employer's own questions carefully. Demographic questions are voluntary. There is no candidate portal on either system, so every update comes by email.
Lever and Ashby are applicant tracking systems used by many startups and fast-growing technology companies. Spotify and Palantir post their jobs on Lever, and OpenAI posts on Ashby. Both keep the application to one page with no account, which is good news, but it also means a few fields carry most of the weight. This guide covers what each form asks and what to get right.
How to tell which one you are on
- Lever: the address starts with
jobs.lever.co/company/. The form is on the same address with/applyat the end. - Ashby: the address starts with
jobs.ashbyhq.com/company/. The form is on the same address with/applicationat the end.
Some companies place these forms inside their own careers site, so the address may show the company's domain instead. Our guide to telling which system a job uses covers the other common ones.
Lever: the form, top to bottom
A typical Lever application has these parts. The employer chooses which are required (marked with a star) and adds its own sections.
- Resume/CV: an "Attach resume/CV" button. Lever then reads the file ("Analyzing resume…") and fills the fields it finds.
- Your details: full name, optional pronouns, email, phone, current location and current company.
- Links: usually LinkedIn, GitHub, portfolio and another website.
- The employer's own sections: for example work authorisation and visa sponsorship, languages, or whether you have worked for the company before.
- Demographic questions: on many forms, voluntary questions about gender, ethnicity or veteran status, each with a consent note and a "prefer not to disclose" option. Some forms show more than one set, for different countries.
- Consent: a privacy notice, and often an optional box to let the company contact you about future roles.
- Submit application.
When Lever "couldn't auto-read" your resume
If Lever shows "Couldn't auto-read resume.", it could not pull text from your file, and the fields stay empty. Fill them by hand, then check why: a scanned PDF, a resume made of images, or an unusual layout are the common causes. A recruiter reading your application will see the same problem, so it is worth fixing. Our resume parsing test shows how to check a file quickly.
Ashby: the form
On Ashby, the application has its own address: the job page with /application at the end. It asks for much the same as Lever: your resume, name and contact details, links, the employer's own questions and, on many forms, a voluntary demographic survey. If the form offers to fill itself from your resume, use it, then check every field it filled.
Fields that matter more than they look
Current company and location. Recruiters at small companies often filter the candidate list by location or time zone and glance at your current employer before anything else. Use your real city, and the company you work for now. If you are between jobs, leave the company field empty rather than inventing one.
Links. Startup recruiters and hiring managers do click LinkedIn, GitHub and portfolio links. Check that each one opens, that your LinkedIn headline and current role match your resume, and that a GitHub link leads to something worth seeing. A broken or empty link costs more than no link.
The employer's questions. Work authorisation, sponsorship and relocation answers are often used to filter applications automatically. Answer them for the country where the job is, truthfully. Free-text questions are read by people: two or three specific sentences beat a pasted cover letter. Our guide to screening questions has examples.
A free-text box, if there is one. Some Lever and Ashby forms end with an optional box for anything else you want to share. If yours has one, use it for two or three sentences that connect your experience to this role. If there is no such box and no cover letter field, do not paste a cover letter into another field.
Your resume is read by people
At smaller companies, a recruiter or the hiring manager often opens the resume itself rather than a parsed summary. Keep it to one or two pages, put the most relevant experience first, and make your achievements specific. Tailoring it to the job matters more here than any formatting trick.
Applying to more than one role
Recruiters usually see every role you have applied to at their company, not just the one in front of them. Applying to two or three roles that genuinely fit is fine. Applying to every opening at the company makes it look as if none of them is a real fit.
After you apply
Neither Lever nor Ashby gives candidates a portal or a status page. You get a confirmation email, and every later update, including interview invitations and rejections, comes by email from the company. Check your spam folder, and add the recruiter's address to your contacts once you hear from them. Our guide to application status meanings explains what to expect while you wait.
How Shortlist handles Lever and Ashby
Shortlist fills these forms from your profile: your details, links, current company and location, your resume as the attached file, and answers to the employer's questions from what you have saved or suggested for you to review. Demographic questions are filled only from a choice you saved, never guessed, and never sent to the AI. It stops before Submit so you check and send the application yourself.
FAQ
Do I need an account to apply on Lever or Ashby?
No. Both take applications on a single page without an account.
Why did Lever say "Couldn't auto-read resume"?
Lever could not read text from the file, usually because it is a scan, made of images or laid out in a way the reader cannot follow. Fill the fields by hand and fix the file for next time; a text-based PDF or DOCX with one column reads best.
Do I have to answer the demographic questions?
No. They are voluntary, the forms usually state that answering does not affect your application, and there is an option not to disclose.
Can I check the status of a Lever or Ashby application?
Not on the site. Neither system has a candidate portal; the company contacts you by email. If you have heard nothing after two or three weeks, a short follow-up to the recruiter is reasonable.
Can I edit my application after submitting it?
No. Email the recruiter or the company's hiring team if something important was wrong, such as your email address or the attached resume.
Arivu builds Shortlist, a browser extension that checks each job against your profile before you apply. When a guide says how a parser or a form behaves, it was tested in Shortlist; when it describes another company's product, the facts come from that company's own pages.
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