How to apply for jobs online comes down to one thing most guides skip: where the Apply button sends you. Every posting you find, on LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter or a company's careers page, ends in one of three routes. The job board's own short form, a redirect to the employer's site, or the employer's applicant tracking system (ATS) reached directly. Each route asks for different things, puts your application in a different place, and tracks it differently afterwards. This guide walks through all three using the boards' own help center wording, shows how to tell from the button which route you are on, and ends with a weekly routine that keeps the whole thing on a single page.
The short version
- Find a posting on a board, a job search engine or an employer's careers page.
- Read the button. It tells you which of the three routes you are about to take (table below).
- Check that you meet the posting's hard requirements: work authorization, location, licenses, years of experience.
- Adjust your resume to the posting's language, using only skills you can talk about in an interview.
- Fill in the form. On a board form, your profile fills most of it. On an employer's form, expect an account, a resume upload and screening questions. Our field-by-field guide covers every question you will meet.
- Save the confirmation and log the application, especially on the redirect route, where the board will not remember it for you.
- Follow up through the employer's portal or recruiter, not the board.
Three ways an application reaches an employer
| Board's own form | Apply on company site | Straight to the employer's ATS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you get there | A button such as Easy Apply, Easily apply, 1-Click Apply or Quick Apply | A button such as Apply, Apply now or Apply on company site that opens a new page | The employer's careers page, or a link to it |
| What is filled for you | Your board profile and saved resume | Nothing from the board | Whatever the employer's system has saved, if you have an account there |
| What you fill | Screening questions the employer added | The whole employer form, often after creating an account | The whole employer form |
| Where it lands | Sent to the employer by the board | The employer's ATS | The employer's ATS |
| Who tracks it | The board, in its applied jobs list | Usually nobody but you and the employer | The employer's candidate portal, if it has one |
The second and third columns end in the same place. The only difference is whether you found the job on a board first. That matters because the board stops helping the moment it hands you over.
Which route is this button?
| Where you are | Button | Route |
|---|---|---|
| Easy Apply | Board form. LinkedIn's help center: "Depending on the employer's settings, you'll see an Easy Apply or Apply button." (LinkedIn) | |
| Apply | Company site. You'll "be routed to that company's website or job board to continue the application process." (LinkedIn) | |
| Indeed | Apply now, with the Easily apply badge | Board form. "When available, you'll find an 'Apply now' button instead of 'Apply on company site'" (Indeed) |
| Indeed | Apply on company site | Company site |
| ZipRecruiter | 1-Click Apply | Board form |
| ZipRecruiter | Apply Now | Company site. "the application site will be opened in a new window." (ZipRecruiter) |
| Handshake | Quick Apply | Board form, only on postings that need no documents or just a resume (Handshake) |
| Handshake | Apply Externally | Company site (Handshake) |
| Hiring Cafe | Apply directly on employer's site | Company site. Hiring Cafe lists jobs but leaves the application to the employer's form (Hiring Cafe) |
| A company's careers page | Apply | Employer's ATS |
A board's own form: Easy Apply and its cousins
This is the fastest route because the board already holds your details. The employer chose to accept applications on the board, and the board passes your profile along.
- LinkedIn Easy Apply. You open the posting, select Easy Apply, complete the prompts, review and submit. LinkedIn says "You cannot edit or withdraw an application once submitted through LinkedIn." It also limits daily Easy Apply volume, and its Easy Apply limits article says rapid submitting "triggers a temporary pause on Easy Apply."
- Indeed's Easily apply. "For roles with the 'Easily apply' badge, your profile automatically fills required fields and employer questions" (Indeed). Screening questions are not optional: "You must answer these questions before you can continue," and you can save a draft and finish later (Indeed Help Center).
- ZipRecruiter 1-Click Apply. ZipRecruiter's annual report says job seekers "create a profile and can then apply for certain opportunities with a single click."
- Wellfound. "One-click apply. Your profile is your application" (Wellfound).
- Welcome to the Jungle. On its native form, "you will find your personal fields already filled in," and you double-check them, upload a CV and answer the recruiter's questions (Welcome to the Jungle).
The tradeoff is that a one-click form sends the same profile and resume to every employer unless you change it. Indeed now offers to tailor your resume inside its form ("Save time applying by instantly customizing your resume to the job," per its help center), which helps, but on most boards a quick application is a generic one. Whether Easy Apply gets replies is a separate question, covered with data in does LinkedIn Easy Apply work.
Use this route when the posting genuinely fits and the employer has chosen it. Before you click, update the resume the board will send.
Apply on company site: where the boards stop helping
Many postings do not use the board's form. The board shows the job, then hands you to the employer. From that click on, the board has no part in your application, and its help pages say so.
- Indeed: "If you applied on the employer's website, Indeed doesn't send a confirmation email" (Indeed Help Center). Its My Jobs article lists "You did not apply directly on Indeed" as a reason an application may be missing, and says you can only view details or withdraw "if the job was posted directly on Indeed" (Indeed).
- LinkedIn: for jobs where "the job application process is managed outside of LinkedIn," it shows "Responses managed off LinkedIn" and the responsiveness data is unavailable (LinkedIn).
- Welcome to the Jungle: "the status of these applications cannot be monitored on your candidate page" (Welcome to the Jungle FAQ).
- Handshake: "You'll need to submit the application on the external site to fully apply for the position!" (Handshake).
Three practical consequences follow.
Clicking is not applying. The board may count a click on Apply as interest. The employer counts nothing until you submit its own form. Handshake's exclamation mark is there for a reason.
Nothing carries over. Your board profile does not fill the employer's form. Expect to create an account, upload a resume, then retype parts of it, answer the employer's screening questions and the voluntary self-identification questions. Workday employers usually want a separate account per company, which our ATS guide explains.
You are now the only record. Copy the posting's text or save it as a PDF before you start, because postings close and pages vanish, and you will want the wording when an interview arrives weeks later.
Going straight to the employer's ATS
The redirect lands you in an ATS, and so does any careers page you open yourself. Jobscan's 2026 review, which checked the careers pages of every Fortune 500 company, says "In 2026, we detected an ATS for 97.4% of Fortune 500 companies," and "Over 40% of the companies on the list use Workday for talent acquisition" (Jobscan). At a large employer the employer's form is effectively the only form.
Going to the careers page first has real advantages:
- You see the employer's full list, including roles that were never syndicated to the boards you check.
- You apply where the recruiter works. There is no board in between deciding what to pass along.
- You usually get a status page. Greenhouse's free MyGreenhouse account lets you "See every application in one place, with clear stages so you know where you stand in the process" and autofill with Quick Apply (Greenhouse). On Workday sites, a typical instruction from a university employer reads: "Click Candidate Home in the header. You will see all submitted applications" (Washington and Lee University).
Keep the channel in proportion, though. Gem's 2026 benchmark, built on more than 165 million applicants and 1.2 million hires from June 2021 to May 2025, found "Job boards and company marketing channels generate roughly 90% of all applications but account for only about half of hires," and that "Referrals convert at 11x the rate of inbound applicants" (Gem). Gem sells recruiting software, so treat it as platform data rather than a census. The lesson is not to stop applying online. It is to pair each application to a job you really want with an attempt to find someone inside, which how to ask for a job referral walks through.
Tracking what you sent
Each route leaves a different trail, so the tracking job differs too.
| Route | What the platform remembers | What you should log yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Board form | LinkedIn's or Indeed's applied list, with statuses such as Application viewed or Not selected by employer on Indeed (Indeed) | The resume version you sent |
| Company site, found on a board | Usually nothing on the board | Everything: employer, title, link, date, resume version, account email |
| Employer ATS | The employer's candidate portal, where it has one | Account email and password hint for that employer, plus the resume version |
A sample log row (invented for this post):
| Date | Employer | Title | Route | Portal | Resume version | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-14 | Example Freight Co. | Data Analyst | Indeed to company site (Workday) | Candidate Home, signed up with your job search email | analyst-v3-logistics.pdf | Check status 2026-10-28; ask an alumnus for a referral |
The account column saves more time than it looks. Every Workday employer is a separate account, and a forgotten password at application number forty is a real cost. A fuller template is in our job application tracker post.
A weekly routine
Volume and fit both matter, and a fixed rhythm keeps either from crowding out the other. For scale, Huntr's 2025 report, based on its users' self-tracked searches, found the median job seeker sends roughly 16 applications a week, with the 75th percentile at 40 (Huntr). Pick a number you can tailor and track.
| Day | Task | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Run saved searches on two boards and check the careers pages of your target employers. Shortlist postings you meet the hard requirements for. | 45 minutes |
| Tuesday to Thursday | Apply to the shortlist. Read each button first, tailor the resume, save the posting text, log the row. | 1 to 2 hours a day |
| Wednesday | Send two or three referral or informational messages for the roles you most want. | 30 minutes |
| Friday | Check candidate portals and your inbox. Follow up on anything older than two weeks. | 30 minutes |
| Every other Friday | Count applications, replies and interviews by route. If one route never answers, shift time away from it. | 20 minutes |
The referral slot is not filler. Ashby's referrals report, built on 38 million applications, charts application-to-interview rates of "referral 40%, sourced 25%, and inbound just 3%" (Ashby). A handful of good referral requests can produce as many interviews as a long week of cold applications. More on balancing the two is in our job search strategy guide.
Red flags on any route
The legitimate routes above never ask you for money. The Federal Trade Commission's job scam guidance says "Don't pay for the promise of a job," and "No honest potential employer will ever send you a check to deposit" and ask you to send some of it back. If a "recruiter" moves you off the employer's own system to a chat app and then asks for a fee or your bank details, stop.
Where ApplyEze fits
ApplyEze works on the company-site route, the one the boards hand off. It watches the career boards of more than 100,000 employers directly, with new roles arriving within minutes on most boards, and it completes applications on 12 platforms: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, Workable, SmartRecruiters, Oracle Recruiting Cloud, JazzHR, BambooHR, Rippling, Pinpoint and Recruitee. Workday and Oracle need a connected application inbox. It does not apply through LinkedIn Easy Apply or other boards' own forms. If you would rather keep doing the redirect route by hand, the routine above works without any tool.