Greenhouse just standardised its application statuses. The meanings are still yours to guess.

The short answer

If you are looking at a Greenhouse status right now, here is what can be said with the documentation open. Applied means the application was submitted. In review means it is sitting in the stage every application lands in by default. Application closed means you were rejected. Hired means you accepted an offer.

Everything between those points names a step in a process the employer designed, and the employer wrote the sentence explaining it. The name tells you the kind of step. It does not tell you how you are doing.

• Unambiguous: Applied, Application closed, Hired.
• Structural rather than evaluative: In review, and every interview or assessment stage.
• Never available: any read on how you compare with other candidates.

What actually changed in August 2026

Greenhouse added a feature called MyGreenhouse Stages, documented on 27 August 2026. Its stated purpose is to give candidates a clear view of where they are in the hiring process, in Greenhouse’s words, “without exposing your internal stage names.”

The mechanism matters more than the purpose. Employers map their internal stages onto a fixed, candidate-facing set of names. The documentation is explicit that the names themselves are locked: “You can’t change the candidate-facing names, but you can edit the description candidates read for each one.”

That is a real improvement on what came before, and it is why this article exists. For the first time there is a published list of the words a Greenhouse candidate can see. What has not changed is that the words are attached to whatever the employer decided they mean.

The eleven names an employer picks from

These are the candidate-facing stage names in Greenhouse’s standard set, with the default description each one ships with. Employers choose which of these apply to a job and what order they appear in, and they can replace any description with their own wording.

In review is the only one that is compulsory. Greenhouse states that every setup starts with it, that it cannot be removed, and that it must map to at least one Application Review stage.

Read the descriptions as what the stage is for, not as a verdict. Technical interview tells you what is coming. It says nothing about whether you are the front runner or the fifth person they are seeing.

• In review: our hiring team is reviewing your application.
• Initial screen: you have an initial screen coming up.
• Hiring team interview: an interview with a member of the hiring team.
• Team interview: you are meeting members of the team.
• Technical interview: assessed on technical or job-specific skills.
• Assessment: a case study, live assessment, or working session.
• Onsite interview: one or more interviews in person or by video.
• Executive interview: an interview with a senior leader.
• Reference check, then Background check, which Greenhouse describes as a required step before an offer can be finalised.
• Offer: an offer has been extended and the details shared with you.

The three Greenhouse sets for you, which nobody can edit

Three more statuses exist that employers do not configure at all. Greenhouse’s documentation lists them as set automatically and not editable. Applied is what candidates see on submitting an application. Hired is what they see on accepting an offer. Application closed is what they see when the employer rejects the application.

That third one is the most useful sentence in this whole topic. Every other guide to job application statuses hedges about what rejection looks like. Here the vendor documents it plainly, and because employers cannot edit these three, the meaning does not vary between companies.

So if you see Application closed, you have your answer. It is a hard thing to read. But an unambiguous status is worth more than a hopeful one, because it lets you stop refreshing and put the effort somewhere it can still change the outcome.

Three reasons identical words still mean different things

The names are standardised. The experience is not, for three reasons all stated in the documentation.

First, employers write the descriptions. Greenhouse ships a default sentence for each stage and says plainly that it is editable. It suggests employers add context specific to their organisation, such as what to prepare or how long a step usually takes. So the same two words can sit above completely different explanations.

Second, employers choose which stages apply and in what order. A company that runs no technical interview simply will not show that stage. You cannot infer a missing step from a list that was assembled per job.

Third, and least obvious, the setup is per department. Greenhouse states that stages are created at department level and apply to all jobs in that department. Two roles at the same company, in different departments, can present different ladders.

There is a fourth wrinkle worth knowing if the statuses you are seeing look nothing like the list above. Greenhouse notes that legacy stage setups keep showing their current names to candidates until an employer maps them to the standard names. Some companies are still showing raw internal stage names.

What to do with a Greenhouse status

Use it for the two things it reliably tells you: whether the application is still open, and what the next step is called. Prepare for the named step. Ignore the rest.

Do not ask Greenhouse. The company states that it is solely a processor of applications on behalf of its customers and “will not share the status of any candidate application,” directing candidates to the company they applied to. That is a clear answer, and it saves you writing to the wrong place.

Read the stage description rather than the stage name. Since the employer wrote it, it is the only part of the display carrying information specific to this company, and it is where a timeline would appear if they bothered to give one.

Then stop refreshing. A status that has not moved is not news, and stages update only when someone moves you internally. Keep your own record of where each application stands and when you plan to follow up, so your view of the search does not depend on what a portal chooses to show.

• Prepare for the named step, and read the employer’s description under it.
• Treat Application closed as final. Treat everything else as location, not verdict.
• Ask the employer, never the software vendor.

What we read, and what we did not

This article is built from three pages of Greenhouse’s public support documentation, all read on 1 September 2026. The MyGreenhouse Stages article was updated 27 August 2026 and the Application review stage article on 26 May 2026, and the third covers candidate inquiries. Every quoted phrase links to its source below.

The limits are worth stating. We have documentation for what the system can display and who controls each part of it. We have no data on how many employers have adopted the new stage set, so we cannot tell you how likely you are to see it rather than a legacy setup. We also have no visibility into what any individual employer wrote in their descriptions.

Workday statuses work differently and are covered separately, including why the same two words mean close to opposite things at two universities running the same software.