What does "in process" mean on a job application?
The interview went well. Probably. Since then the portal has said "In process" every single time you checked, which is three words doing the job of an explanation.
"In process" usually means your application is still open somewhere in the employer's hiring workflow. That is the useful half. The other half: it does not say where. It can mean nobody has looked yet, or that you have interviewed and the record has not been closed. It does not promise an offer.
Applicant portals are very good at making a few words carry the weight of an actual explanation. This one is carrying a lot.
What can "in process" cover?
Depending on the employer, any of these can hide under the same two words:
- recruiter review
- hiring-manager review
- screening
- interview scheduling
- active interviewing
- internal discussion
- background or reference steps
- a candidate record that simply has not been closed
That list is our summary of how the labels get used, not a vendor's definition. The pages employers publish about their own portals show the pattern, though. According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's HR guide to Workday Recruiting, a candidate sees "Submitted" in the review stage, and "In Progress" in any other active stage, which includes interview, assessment and employment agreement. One label. Several very different weeks of your life.
Is it "in process" or "in progress"?
Depends who you ask, which is rather the point. The two employer pages we read use "In Progress." The City of Tucson's careers page says its "In Progress" status means the application was received from the job posting and is under review. And the same step gets different words in different places: at Tucson an application under review shows "In Progress," while in the Wisconsin guide the review stage shows "Submitted."
People search for "in process," so that is the title. The honest answer is that the label is whatever the employer's system happens to show.
Who decides how vague the label is?
In Greenhouse, at least, the employer. Greenhouse describes a feature, MyGreenhouse Stages, that lets an employer map its internal hiring stages to simple candidate-friendly labels, and combine several internal stages into one. It gives "Interviewing" and "Offer Sent" as example labels. So a company with eight internal steps can show you two words. Whether other systems give employers the same control, we could not find out.
Our reading is that this is also why the label can lag. The internal stages run the hiring. What you see is a summary of them. When the summary is coarse, a lot can happen behind it without a single word changing.
What does "in process" mean after an interview?
Usually that the candidacy is still open in the system. That is all. Not that the team is debating you this minute. Not that an offer is coming. Only that the process has not visibly ended.
Whatever timeline the interviewer or recruiter gave you beats the dashboard. "We will get back to you next week" is better information than any status ever written.
Why do statuses lag?
Sometimes nothing is wrong. A recruiter may move candidates in batches, a hiring manager may leave feedback in another tool, and the employer's internal stages may map imperfectly to the public ones. All of that is our reading, and it varies.
There is also a documented reason for silence. The Wisconsin guide says that changing a candidate's status in Workday, including removing them from consideration or closing the requisition, does not send them any notification. The employer has to send a message separately, if it chooses to. So yes, a portal can be behind the truth.
Should you contact somebody?
Use common sense, scaled to how far you have got:
- Applied three days ago: no.
- Applied a month ago, never spoke to anyone, role still open: one concise follow-up is reasonable.
- Interviewed, and the date they promised has passed: yes. See what to send after a job interview.
Keep applying while you wait. Hope is not a pipeline stage.
HUNT keeps a status on each application and moves it when replies land in your inbox, so the portal is not your only source. See how applying works.
Related: What does "under review" mean?, What does "no longer under consideration" mean? and What to send after a job interview.
Published
Sources
- Candidate View, by Job Application Status, University of Wisconsin-Madison Human Resources.In Workday Recruiting, one label (In Progress) covers every active stage after review; status changes send no notification.
- Check the Status of a Job Application, City of Tucson.One employer's wording: In Progress means the application was received from the job posting and is under review.
- MyGreenhouse Stages, Greenhouse.Employers can map internal hiring stages to candidate-friendly labels such as Interviewing or Offer Sent, and combine several internal stages into one candidate-facing stage.