How to apply for a job on Lever

Lever is an applicant tracking system that many startups and mid-sized companies use to post jobs and collect applications. Each employer gets a job board at jobs.lever.co/ followed by the company's name (or jobs.eu.lever.co for employers that keep their data in Europe). Every posting has its own page under that address, and its form sits one step further, at the same address with /apply on the end.

So a Lever application has two pages:

1. The posting. The title, the team, the location and work model, the description and, where the employer publishes one, the pay range. At the top and bottom sits an “Apply for this job” button.
2. The application. One page with every field. There is no account to create and no second step.

Some employers show their Lever board inside their own careers site. The form is still Lever's; only the frame around it changes. An address with lever-source or lever-origin in it simply tells the employer where you came from.

The first field on a Lever form is usually the resume upload, and it does more than store a file. When you attach a resume, Lever reads it and fills fields from it: your name, email, phone, current company and sometimes links. That saves typing when the read goes well. When it goes badly you get a phone number split in the wrong place, a company name taken from the wrong line, or a name with a stray word in it.

Two habits follow from this.

• Upload before you type. If you fill the fields first and attach the resume after, the parser may write over what you typed. Attach the file, wait for the fields to fill, then correct them.
• Give the parser an easy file. A single-column PDF with a real text layer, your contact lines at the top and standard headings such as Experience and Education reads cleanly. Text inside images, two-column layouts and contact details in a page header are where parsers go wrong. Our guide to how an ATS parses a resume covers the details.

To replace the file, upload a new one in the same field. Lever swaps it, and may fill the fields again from the new file, so check them once more.

Your details

Lever usually asks for your full name in one field rather than first and last name apart, then email, phone and current company. Type your name as it appears on your resume. The current company field is optional on most forms; if you are between jobs, leave it empty or put your most recent employer.

Links

A links section often follows, with fields for LinkedIn, GitHub, a portfolio and other websites. Fill the ones that help this application. A designer's portfolio or an engineer's GitHub is worth a line; a social account that says nothing about your work is better left out.

The employer's questions

Lever lets each employer add its own questions, often grouped under a heading of their own. Work authorization, visa sponsorship, location, salary expectations, notice and how you heard about the job are common, as are open questions about your interest in the role. Required ones carry a mark. For how to answer each kind, see answering application questions.

Additional information

Many Lever forms end with a large box for anything else you want to add, which is where a short cover letter can go when the form has no separate field for one. Keep it to a few paragraphs written for this posting; our guide to writing a cover letter for a job shows how.

Voluntary survey

Postings in the United States often carry a voluntary self-identification survey on gender, race, veteran status and disability. It is optional and every question can be declined. Employers state that it is kept apart from the hiring decision.

1. Read the posting to the end. Lever postings often list requirements and nice-to-haves separately. The requirements decide what your resume must show.
2. Prepare a resume for this posting. Work the required skills into the experience lines that really show them. See how to tailor your resume to a job description and which resume keywords matter.
3. Press Apply for this job and attach the resume first.
4. Check every field the parser filled. Name, email, phone and current company, one by one.
5. Add the links that show your work for this role.
6. Answer the employer's questions, the required ones above all, with the same facts you give on every form.
7. Add a short letter in the cover letter or additional information field, if there is one.
8. Read the page from the top and press Submit application. Lever shows a thank-you page, and most employers send a confirmation email.

Submitting cannot be undone. If the page shows a red message after you press the button, a required field is still empty or a CAPTCHA wants an answer.

• Trusting the parser. The most common Lever slip is a field the parser filled wrongly and nobody checked: a phone number missing a digit, last year's employer as the current company, a job title in the name field. Read each one after the upload.
• Typing first, uploading second. Whatever you typed can be replaced when the parser runs. Upload, then type.
• A cover letter pasted into the wrong box. A letter in the links section or in an open question meant for something else reads as careless. Use the cover letter field, or the additional information box at the end.
• A location answer that ignores the posting. Lever postings name a location and often a work model under the title. A question about where you will work refers to that, not to where you would prefer.
• Different facts on different forms. Startups on Lever often share recruiters and investors. Answer sponsorship, notice and salary the same way for the same country every time.

The Jobapplier browser extension recognises Lever's posting and apply pages, on Lever's own board or framed inside an employer's site, and opens a panel beside them with the job and your resume's match to it.

• It works with the parser, not against it. Lever reads the uploaded resume and fills fields, and it clears what it had typed after an upload. The extension runs its steps again once the parser has finished and types back any field the parser wrote over. That second pass makes no new AI call.
• Your answers come from your own data. Contact lines come from your profile and are typed by code. Questions are answered from your Application answers card, then your profile, and only then by the AI, whose answers are marked AI on the panel.
• The resume. With “Apply with tailored resume”, the Tailor screen opens over the page while the answers are prepared; when you press Apply Now, or close the screen, the extension fills the form in one pass and puts this posting's own resume into Lever's file field.
• Optional fields are filled only when they help. LinkedIn and GitHub go in; an optional field that does not matter for hiring stays empty.

The panel's Review lists every answer before you send. You press Submit Application in the panel or Lever's own button; the extension does not submit by itself, and it photographs the filled form first. A CAPTCHA stays yours.

Lever is one of the forms Jobapplier's cloud Agent fills and sends for you. It sends only to jobs that one of your Apply rules fits and no Skip rule catches, a few at a time within a limit. It skips closed postings and anything you marked applied on the Tracker.

Lever forms carry an invisible CAPTCHA. When one asks for a real answer, the Agent stops and hands the application to you to finish. When a site refuses a bot it retries later, and only the last refusal marks the application failed, with the reason shown to you. Every send is listed in Activity with the rule, the resume and the letter that went.