Managing job statuses: draft, published, internal, confidential, archived

Update a job’s status as your hiring progresses. All jobs start as drafts, which you can save and return to before publishing.

Draft

A draft job is a job that is saved but not yet published. When creating a job, it becomes a draft as soon as you click Save draft, before you choose to publish it internally or externally.

You can access draft jobs from the Jobs page. Click the link at the top right of the page to view them. All account admins can see all draft jobs, while other users can only see drafts they have created.

Published (In Review)

When you click Publish in the job editor, your job enters the review queue, where our experienced specialists will check it so that it matches the job posting guidelines. 

This process helps protect candidates and users from potential fraud. Reviews typically take a few hours and may be faster once your jobs consistently meet the guidelines. If a job is not approved, you will receive an email explaining the reason and any required updates.

If your job is approved, its status in Workable updates automatically from “Published (In review)” to “Published”.

Published (Careers page only)

To post your job only on your careers page (and not on job boards), click Publish and follow the steps below:

1. Access the Find Candidates tab in the editor
2. Click the Free Job Boards option
3. Click the link to 'Unpublish from all free boards'

You can republish to an individual board or all job boards at any time through the Find Candidates section.

Published

After a job is approved in Workable, it may take 12–36 hours for it to appear on job boards, as each board has its own review process. Once published, candidates can find the job and submit applications.

A published job can be visible to candidates on:

• your Workable careers page
• free job boards
• paid job boards (if you used one)

While Hiring Contributors can create job drafts, only Super Admins (and Recruiters for their assigned departments or locations) can publish jobs. When a Hiring Contributor clicks Publish, they are prompted to send a publish request to an admin. The job remains a draft until an admin reviews and publishes it.

You can unpublish and republish jobs at any time. To do so, click the job status located on the right side of the job.

Used Internally

When a job is set to internal use only, members of the hiring team can still fully interact with candidates. Internal jobs are not published externally, so you will not receive external applicants.

You can add candidates manually or use Search with AI. You can also receive referrals and internal applications through the Referrals portal.

Account members who are not part of the hiring team can still see the titles of internal jobs in the account.

Set a job to internal use when you no longer want to receive new applicants, but the hiring process is still ongoing.

Used Confidentially

Confidential jobs are only visible to members of the hiring team. All Super Admins can also view confidential jobs. These jobs are not published externally.

You can add candidates to confidential jobs and fully interact with them, just as you would with published or internal jobs

Set a job to confidential when it needs to be hidden from certain account members.

Archived

Archived jobs appear at the bottom of the Jobs page. These are jobs where no further interaction with candidates is needed.

When you archive a job, members of the hiring team can still view that job.

Hover over an archived job to view options. Unarchiving the job will return it to your list of active jobs. You can republish the job if necessary, but this won't update the date on which the job was originally published. 

Duplicating the job will create a new copy of the job. You'll be able to post the job with a fresh posting date. Candidates in the original job will not carry over to the cloned job; you can move them to proceed with the hiring process without any loss in progress.