SixthacreGuide
Easy Apply or the company’s website?
Most jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed are also on the employer’s own careers site. You can usually apply in either place. Applying on the company’s site takes longer, but it often puts your application in front of fewer competitors and closer to the people hiring. Here is why, how to find the company’s own posting, and when one-click applying is fine.
What Easy Apply is
Easy Apply on LinkedIn, and quick-apply buttons on Indeed and other job boards, let you apply in a few clicks with the profile and résumé you saved on that site. The employer gets your application through the job board. When a posting has no such button, the job board sends you to the company’s own application form instead.
Why one-click postings get crowded
When applying takes ten seconds, everyone applies, including people who only half fit and the bots that send applications by the hundred. Popular one-click postings often collect hundreds of applicants within days. Recruiters can’t read them all closely, so they sort, filter by a few questions or stop reading once they have enough people to interview.
A longer form on the company’s site puts off casual applicants, so the people who finish it are fewer and usually more serious. That is the main reason it’s worth the extra minutes.
What you get on the company’s site
- The system recruiters work in. Most mid-size and large employers run hiring in an applicant tracking system such as Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS or SAP SuccessFactors. Applying there puts you straight into the list they review.
- The full set of questions. Employers use their own form’s questions to screen, such as work permission, notice period or a specific skill. Answering them well is a chance to show you fit, and leaving them unanswered is a common reason applications are passed over.
- New jobs sooner. Jobs usually go up on the careers site first and reach job boards later, if at all. Many smaller employers never post on the big boards.
- A clear record. You get the employer’s own confirmation email, and often an account where you can see the application’s status.
The cost: time
Company forms are longer. Many ask you to create an account, confirm your email and fill in your work history even though your résumé already has it. A Workday application can run to five pages. Applying this way to more than a few jobs a week is a lot of evenings, which is why most people go back to one-click applying.
How to find the company’s own posting
- Open the job on LinkedIn or Indeed and note the exact title and the company.
- Search the web for the company’s name and “careers”, or look for “Careers” or “Jobs” in the footer of its website.
- Find the same title on the careers page. If the page lists hundreds of jobs, use its search box or filter by location.
- Check the job is still open there. If it isn’t listed, it may already be closed, even if the job board still shows it.
- Apply on that page, with a résumé that uses the posting’s own words for the skills it asks for.
When Easy Apply is fine
- The employer only posts the job on LinkedIn or Indeed and has no careers page of its own.
- The posting says to apply through the job board.
- The job was posted in the last day or two and the applicant count is still small.
Do both parts well: apply, then write to a person
Wherever you apply, a short email to the hiring manager afterwards makes it far more likely someone reads your application. How to email a hiring manager after you apply
How Sixthacre does this for you
Sixthacre looks for jobs on company careers pages and local job sites first, in any country. When it finds a job on a big job board that is also on the company’s own site, it applies on the company’s site instead. It fills in the whole form, creates the account when the site needs one, enters the code the employer emails and answers the questions from your profile. Then it emails the hiring manager a short note from you. How it compares with other AI job tools