Employment Application Form FAQs
1) What is an employment application form?
Job applicants fill out employment application forms to apply for jobs. Employers use these forms to collect relevant information about an applicant’s education, work experience, references, and other qualifications. The forms may also request personal information, such as citizenship status, that’s required for compliance with federal and state laws.
Employers use employment application forms, along with résumés, as part of their initial screening process for potential candidates.
2) Why is an employment application form template important?
Using a comprehensive employment application form template can help employers quickly create job postings and start reviewing candidates’ applications. It saves employers time, since an employer won’t have to create a new application form from scratch every time there’s a new job opening.
Using a template helps employers request the information they need from job applicants to consider them for openings in a consistent way. Application form templates include fields for the qualifications, experience, and characteristics employers are looking for. Using pre-built and pre-reviewed templates also reduces the possibility of mistakes or missing fields in a job posting.
3) Who can benefit from using an employment application form?
Employment application forms benefit both employers and job applicants. They provide employers an easy way to organize and track applicants, as well as a standard format to collect pertinent information, such as employment history, educational background, and references. They ensure consistency — asking applicants the same questions will help foster fair comparisons between candidates.
For job seekers, they provide an efficient and organized way to apply for positions. Standardized forms that follow a consistent format are easier to fill out quickly, and pre-built application fields that have already been reviewed can reduce errors and confusion for applicants.
4) What information should you include on an employment application form?
An employment application form typically requests the following information about the applicant:
- Full name
- Contact information (mailing address, phone number, and email address)
- Employment history (previous employers, positions, and dates of employment)
- Education history (degrees and certifications)
- Job-specific open-ended questions
An application form might also request contact information for references, usually from three people who know the applicant in a professional capacity.
You can also include open-ended questions if you want to ask about specific job details, or allow applicants the opportunity to talk about their experience in more detail or why they’re excited to work for your company.
The form might also include a signature or confirmation field, which the applicant fills out to confirm that the information they’ve provided is accurate.
5) Can I customize an employment application form template to fit my company’s needs?
You can easily customize an employment application form template with Jotform. Drag and drop fields to move them around; add new form fields and remove ones you don’t need; change question wording; modify the form’s fonts, colors, and branding; and more.
Customizing an employment application form template allows you to tailor the questions and requested information to better meet your business’s unique requirements.
You can also use Jotform to build a new employment application form from scratch and save it as a template for future use.
6) Can I ask for an applicant’s criminal history on an employment application form?
The Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) shares the following guidelines on the subject: “As a best practice, and consistent with applicable laws, the Commission recommends that employers not ask about convictions on job applications and that, if and when they make such inquiries, the inquiries be limited to convictions for which exclusion would be job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.”
Make sure to account for local and state laws, like “ban the box,” which prohibit employers from asking about criminal history on initial application forms.
7) Can an employment application form include questions about an applicant’s race, ethnicity, or religion?
Review relevant laws in your location to determine the types of questions that are allowable. These types of questions frequently violate local and national laws. Employers should avoid questions that could produce biased results or discriminatory hiring practices.
Some laws do require gathering workforce demographic information, but the information gathered from these questions is typically voluntary and anonymous.
Carefully review your local and national laws and consult a legal professional when necessary.
8) How should an employer handle an applicant who leaves certain fields blank on an employment application form?
How an employer handles blank fields in an application depends on the nature of the fields and how important they are to the employer. If certain fields are marked as optional and an applicant doesn’t fill them out, an employer can still consider the application, since all the information that’s considered essential will still be there.
If a field is considered necessary and is left blank, however, the employer can either reach out to the applicant to request a completed application, or they can simply consider the application incomplete and not consider it.
A good way to avoid this problem is by using form creation software to designate certain fields as “required.” This ensures essential fields are filled out before a form is submitted. Most form software platforms, such as Jotform, offer a simple “required” feature that you can enable on a given field. If one of these fields is left blank, the software won’t submit the form, and will instead notify the applicant that they have to fill in the missing information.
9) Can an employment application form include conditional questions based on the applicant’s answers?
Yes. Conditional questions allow an employer to tailor an application form to a candidate’s background and experience. For example, if your form contains a question about whether an applicant has management experience, you could use conditional logic to direct applicants who answer “yes” to a set of questions that go into more detail on this experience, while those who answer “no” wouldn’t see this set of questions and would continue with the rest of the application.
Jotform offers easy-to-implement conditional logic settings, so you can build specific question sets for specific groups of applicants. Using conditional questions keeps your application form clean and streamlined, and prevents confusion for applicants, who won’t have to scroll through questions that aren’t relevant to them.
10) How can an employer ensure that their employment application form is fair and unbiased?
Consult local and national laws to avoid prohibited application questions.
There are some best practices to follow as well. Ensure the job posting and application form are free of gender-biased or race-biased language. Use language that is applicable to all candidates regardless of age, marital status, ethnicity, or gender.
Ask questions that are relevant to the specific position and the company’s needs. Avoid asking unrelated and overly personal questions that require candidates to submit unnecessary personal information. This helps protect the applicant’s privacy and helps prevent judging applicants based on factors that aren’t related to their job qualifications.
11) How can an employer track form submissions of employment application forms?
An employer can automate application tracking by using a form software that automatically adds each submission to a secure database. Jotform is a great example of this type of software.
Jotform allows employers to create custom forms that applicants can fill out and submit electronically. Form submissions are then stored in a secure database, allowing the employer to easily track all applications, organize and filter them, automatically assign them for review and approval, and more.
You can use tools like Jotform Tables and Jotform Inbox to easily review applications in a central location. Jotform Tables populates a comprehensive table with form submissions and lets you filter and sort the submissions. Jotform Inbox gathers form submissions in an interface similar to an email inbox, letting you easily view and mark submissions.
