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Building an application form

Designing the form candidates fill in when they apply.

Designing the form candidates fill in when they apply.

Once you've opened a template (see Application form templates), the form itself is built page by page, field by field.

Working with pages

Your form's pages appear as tabs above the field builder. From here you can:

  • Select Add Page to add another page.
  • Rename page to give it a clearer name.
  • Remove page to delete it. Any fields on a removed page move to Page 1 rather than being deleted, so you won't lose work by accident.

Adding fields

On any page, select Add Field to add a blank field, or Add pre-built to insert one from Recruit's shared catalogue, such as References, Employment history, Education history, Cover letter, or Address. Add Content inserts non-field content like an image, video, or text block, useful for instructions or a section break.

Each field has:

  • Label: what the candidate sees.
  • Type: Text, Textarea, Number, Email, Phone, URL, Date, File, Select, Multi-select, Checkbox, Content, Signature, or Heading.
  • Required: whether candidates must answer it.
  • Placeholder and Help Text: optional guidance shown alongside the field.
  • Options: for Select, Multi-select, and Checkbox fields, entered as a comma-separated list.

Two extra toggles matter for specific use cases:

  • Qualifying: marks the field as a qualifying question, so you can auto-disqualify candidates based on their answer using Disqualify when answer is.
  • Repeatable: lets candidates add multiple entries under one field, for example several previous employers. Give the group a name so it's clear what's repeating.

Adding compliance packs

Select Add pre-built to also see compliance packs your organisation may need, such as Education, Safeguarding & DBS, Equality & Diversity Monitoring, Criminal convictions, Fair Employment (Northern Ireland), and UK Inclusion Schemes. These add a ready-made set of questions to the form in one step.

If you remove a pack later, its questions are deleted from the form when you save, but any answers candidates already submitted are kept, so removing a pack doesn't erase historical candidate data.

Making fields conditional

Fields can show or require themselves based on how a candidate answers an earlier question. See How conditional logic works on application forms for how to set this up.