How to apply for a job on iCIMS

iCIMS is a recruiting system used by many mid-size and large employers, especially in the US. Its postings live at an address ending in icims.com, with /jobs/ and a number in the path. Often you never see that address: the employer shows the iCIMS pages inside its own careers site, in a frame, so the page looks like the company's while the form underneath is iCIMS.

Three things are worth knowing before you start:

• The first page asks for your email and a check. iCIMS starts with a short page for your email address, and the button that moves you on usually brings up a CAPTCHA.
• Each employer sets up its own pages. Two iCIMS applications can look quite different. One employer asks five questions, another thirty, and the order of the pages changes with them.
• There is usually no progress bar. You often cannot tell how many pages are left until the last one shows a Submit button.

On the posting, press Apply for this job online. iCIMS opens a page that asks for your email address. Where the employer has one, a privacy statement sits below it with a box to accept. When you press Next, iCIMS shows a CAPTCHA, often an hCaptcha picture puzzle, and only after you solve it does the form open.

Depending on the employer and on whether you have applied there before, iCIMS may then ask you to sign in, to set a password, or to confirm your address from an email it sends. Follow what the page says. Use the same email you use everywhere else in your job search, because that is where the employer will write to you.

What comes next is set by the employer, so take this as the usual shape rather than a fixed list. Most iCIMS applications ask for some or all of:

• Contact details: your name, address, phone and email, sometimes with how you heard about the job.
• Your resume: an upload, sometimes with a cover letter beside it. Some employers have iCIMS read the resume and fill later fields from it. Check what it parsed; our guide to how an ATS parses a resume covers what tends to go wrong.
• Work history and education: entries with employer, title, dates, school and degree.
• The employer's questions: right to work, sponsorship, relocation, salary, start date and questions about the role.
• Voluntary disclosures: gender, ethnicity, veteran status and disability on US forms, each with an option to decline.
• A final page: sometimes a typed signature or an acknowledgement that what you entered is true, and the Submit button.

Take the questions slowly. On iCIMS, as on any ATS, an answer about sponsorship or right to work can screen the application out before a person reads it. Our guide to answering application questions goes through the common ones.

Jobapplier's browser extension runs in your own Chrome. Open the posting and its panel opens beside it. On an employer's careers site that frames iCIMS, the panel waits until the frame has loaded and works inside it.

1. It presses Apply for this job online for you, and then leaves the email page to you, as above. Once you are past the check and the form is open, press Autofill.
2. It reads each page as it comes and fills it from your Jobapplier profile: contact details, your resume, each job and school, and answers to the employer's questions written from your profile and your Application answers card. Every answer the AI wrote is marked as such, so you can find and edit it.
3. Because iCIMS forms rarely show a progress bar, the extension cannot tell a middle page from the last one by the bar. So by default it fills the page and lets you press Next. With “Continuously autofill multipage forms” on in its settings, it presses Next itself when nothing required on the page is empty, and it never presses a button that reads as Submit.
4. The last Submit is yours: press Submit Application in the panel, or the form's own Submit. The panel's button stays disabled, and says why, while a required field is empty.

To send a resume made for this one posting, press Apply with tailored resume instead of Autofill; the posting's own resume, named Resume.pdf, goes into the form. See how to tailor a resume to a job description and the resume tailoring feature.

• the email page, its privacy statement and its CAPTCHA
• any sign-in, password or emailed code iCIMS asks for; Jobapplier does not read your mail
• a photo or video, if an employer asks for one
• the final Submit

What you type into a field yourself counts as yours straight away, and the extension does not write over it. A field the page reveals later, after you answer something above it, is filled when it appears.

Jobapplier's cloud Agent does not apply on iCIMS. iCIMS applications are filled in your own browser, with you at the first page and at Submit.

iCIMS normally shows a thank-you page and emails a confirmation to the address you entered on the first page. Keep that email: it often holds a link back to the employer's careers portal, where you can see the application or apply to another job there without typing everything again.

Jobapplier records the application once, when the employer's confirmation shows or when you tell the panel it went, and it then sits on your Tracker with the resume that was sent. Applying to several jobs at one employer? Each needs its own application, and iCIMS may recognise your email from the first one.

• Open the posting itself. If a careers site frames iCIMS strangely, opening the posting on its icims.com address gives you the same form without the employer's page around it.
• Look for the last page before you press Next. Without a progress bar, the only sign is the button: when it reads Submit, you are on the last page. Check everything first.
• Answer equal employment questions once. Keep your answers on your Application answers card and the extension uses them on every form. A question the card leaves open is decided by the setting “Let AI give its best answer”: on, the default, the AI picks; off, the form's decline option or the most neutral one. You see the answer either way before you submit.
• Use the same email each time. iCIMS ties your applications at an employer to it, and you will need it to see their status later.
• Keep any password iCIMS asks you to set. Some employers let you sign back in to check the application or update your details.

The extension is for Chrome and is not in the Chrome Web Store yet. You connect it to your account under Settings, Login & Security, Your Browsers. Browse companies that are hiring to find the next posting.