Product updates
Fixes and improvements to Applystead, newest first, many of them from member feedback. Each is listed once it is live for every member.
Saving your time budget no longer drops the keyboard focus, and a calendar connection that redraws after a sync leaves it where you put it. Small fixes, but a screen that keeps your place is quicker to use without a mouse.
Each job in your queue shows a reply score from 1 to 99: how likely an application is to get a reply; 50 is average. Open Reply score above your queue, or Queue and Auto apply in Settings, and slide to set a minimum: the slider shows exactly how many of your ready jobs Auto would apply to, and jobs under it stay in your queue for you to apply to yourself. Also in the API and agent connection.
Employers read the way their own postings and careers sites write them: BCforward, BlackRock, Backblaze, Baptist Health, T-Mobile, U-Haul, O-I and Bob's Discount Furniture among them. Kraft Heinz, Minor International, Care Initiatives, Jefferson Health, Bank of America and AMD each have one page instead of two, and a role both pages listed with the same title and place is listed once.
When an employer invites you to an interview, the card beside your job queue now asks how Applystead is working for you. Rate it from 1 to 5 stars and add a few words if you like. It is published only if you tick the box and choose the name shown with it. Pick “Not now” and we won’t ask again about that invitation.
Even more questions on employers' forms are now completed from the details you've already given us: follow-ups that don't apply to you, signature and acknowledgement boxes, eligibility questions worded unusually, and lists where several choices apply. Written answers are checked against your resume and redone when needed, and a profile update still re-checks only the applications it can help.
A company page's locations and role cards, a role page's list of where the employer hires and a job page's location now read like place names: "Sydney, Australia" and "Remote (United States)" instead of a country code, a bare "US" or a state written twice. What you saved in your searches, questions and applications is unchanged.
The homepage now leads with one button and its terms, shows the product in drawings instead of walls of text, and puts how it works and the tour up front. The trial and the price sit in one plan card. On a phone the page is about 40% shorter, with a menu in the header and a bar that follows you to start your free trial.
Moving the pay or match minimum now updates how many jobs your settings let through while you drag, and changing a setting shows its new number straight away. The numbers from your last search are there the moment the settings open, before this visit's job data is ready.
When a job asks for a skill your profile partly covers, like AWS when it asks for AWS Lambda, your match now says the skill is partly on your profile instead of missing: on the queue row, the job page's skill pickers, your application record, Otto's answers and Why this match?. The pickers offer those skills in their own group, so you add the exact skill only when it is true.
The pass that re-reads postings whose skills and other details were still missing now runs every hour, so more postings carry their skills when they reach your queue, and more of them show a match score.
The checkboxes on the review step of setup could be drawn larger than intended on some phones. They now keep their proper size and shape, and the choices and checkboxes on the plan and Membership screens and where you set up a domain of your own are drawn the same way.
When we tailor your resume to a job, a skill the job asks for is now suggested only for a role that already shows related work, so an older role no longer picks up tools it never used. Skills still lists the job's keywords. Resume studio's "Only claim tools I've used" now explains both sides: Off lets each job's tools appear in your experience; On keeps only tools your profile or resume lists.
Some employers' forms ask whether you want full-time, part-time, or temporary or contract work. When we don't already know, Applications › Questions now asks you once, and your answer is used on the applications that need it.
Some On and Off choices and checkboxes were drawn stretched or oversized on phones and in the dark theme, such as Off under "Summary on resumes made for each job" in Auto apply's resume settings. They now keep their round or square shape there and across the queue, Resume studio, the Mailbox and the Calendar, and the choices on our privacy request form sit beside their labels again.
We laid the groundwork for paying without leaving the page, and added a check that tells us if setup ever starts taking more steps again. Nothing changes for you yet.
Queue options now shows where your Auto apply settings sit between conservative and full blast. Drag the new minimum pay slider or the match slider and the count follows as you move, so you see how many jobs each one leaves out before you save. Jobs that don't list pay stay in. Each switch says what it adds or leaves out, and your AI agent and the developer API can read the same numbers.
Setup's last step is shorter: work status, a short checklist and, if still unanswered, relocation are one tap each. Where automatic applying is offered, you choose there whether Applystead applies for you or you approve each application. Sign-in shows one-tap options first and keeps you signed in for 30 days. After checkout your membership appears by itself.
When a new question applies to you, it now shows up in Applications › Questions much sooner, and the check that keeps your questions up to date finishes faster.
A connected AI agent, or your own code with an API key, can now ask the Assistant a question, with text of its own for that one question or about a meeting on your calendar. It can read and change your context and system prompt, keep a call transcript you have permission to keep and file the current call under an interview. Pairing a device and recording stay with you.
Some employers' forms need a legal first and last name. When we have only one name for you, Applications › Questions now asks for your legal name once, and your answer is used on the applications that need it.
Some employers' forms need the month and year you started and finished your most recent job. When your profile gives only the years, Applications › Questions now asks you once, and the dates are saved to your experience and used on the applications that need them.
Recruiters reach you on your own Applystead number. If a number keeps calling with spam, open Calls & texts, press Block next to a call or text from it, and its calls and texts stop reaching you. Blocked numbers are listed on the same screen, each with Unblock beside it if you change your mind.
Interviews now has Remove from Interviews: open the interview and choose it from More, or press it in the interview's side panel, and we ask before anything changes. The emails stay in your Mailbox, and any round you added to your calendar stays there.
The demo that creators use to show Applystead with sample data now opens an interview's briefing from Today, Calendar and the Assistant, the way your own workspace does. Nothing changes in your own workspace.
Assistant now has its own place in the menu, next to Interviews and Calendar. It shows your next meetings from your calendar for the week ahead, and you can ask it about any of them. Calendar shows the Assistant beside your next event and marks the upcoming interviews it has a briefing for: open one to read its briefing. Today's upcoming interviews link straight to theirs.
Some employers' forms ask for a phone number, the school you attended or the weekly hours you want. When we don't have one of these, Applications › Questions now asks you once, and your answer is used on the applications that need it.
When an employer asks for a resume, the reply Otto drafts comes with the resume you applied with already attached: yours to change or remove before you send. Drafts can now draw on the answers you gave on that application too, so more of an employer's questions come back already answered.
When your resume is tailored to a job, its skills now lead with what that posting asks for and keep the rest of your own list short and readable, so the skills you added to your profile no longer all appear on every application you send.
Applying through one job board's quick-apply window is now more reliable. When you update your profile or your answers, those updates are put to use more precisely across your applications. More employer questions (work eligibility, clearance, past agreements, earlier work, preferred title, how you heard of the job) are now answered from the details you've already given us.
When an employer's reply or an interview invitation is waiting for you and you have never turned Full auto on, Otto now offers it: one tap opens the Full auto dialog, where you turn it on yourself. The dialog has a new box for recruiters and agencies. Choose Not now and Otto stops asking.
The "Did you book a time?" prompt and every Interviews row now offer Have Otto schedule it whenever an interview still needs a time, so Otto can find and book a slot for you. When Otto needs your interview hours first, it asks, with one tap to use Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. Your phone assistant offers callers times inside those hours.
Invitations to a live interview, and messages from a real person about a job you applied to, used to sit in Updates with nothing waiting for you. They now get a reply you can send, a to-do, or a booking card in your Mailbox. Receipts, codes and bulk updates still stay out of the way.
Calls and texts on your recruiter line now carry unread markers, so a missed call or a recruiter's message stands out until you open it. Carrier opt-out notices and promotions no longer count as unread: they wait under Other, apart from real messages. When a caller asks when you are free, the assistant notes the time they asked for on the call.
On November 11 many job pages on Applystead showed "This job is closed" although the employers' postings were still open. Those pages are coming back at the same links, and a job page now closes only when the posting itself is gone or has expired.
Interview hours is a new setting: the days and times you can interview, Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm to start, in your own time zone. It sits in Settings under Calendar and time budget, and the last step of setup shows it prefilled so you can confirm it there. Otto offers and accepts interview times inside your hours, and in your Mailbox it now asks you to set them instead of guessing times.
When someone asks for a time, a document or an answer, Otto now writes the reply. When a message only asks you to fill in a form, book a time or sign, you get a to-do instead of an acknowledgement. Drafts draw on the job description, your answers and resume, offer times with their time zone, and leave fewer blanks to fill. A draft that would turn down a job you applied to waits for your tap.
When an email offers you an interview time — a calendar invitation, a booking link, or a message asking when you're free — Have Otto schedule it now appears in your notifications, on the Interviews list and on the job's page, not only inside the message itself. It also recognises booking links that pass through a redirect, and it stays available while the offer stands.
When an interview's time has passed, your Interviews ask whether it happened: one tap for It happened, It didn't or It was moved, and the next step or thank-you is ready. An invitation you haven't booked yet asks you to pick a time, with one tap to open the employer's email. When an employer goes quiet, Otto prepares a nudge at five and ten business days for you to review and send.
The Mailbox now opens with a Waiting on you list: interview requests with no time booked, replies and to-dos ready for you, and interviews whose time has passed with no outcome, oldest first. Today shows the count and the three oldest, and five or more interview requests to book lead your Queue when you open it.
If your assistant reads Applystead through the agent connection, a long answer that used to be cut short now keeps its paging details, so the next page can be read instead of the first page repeating. Saving an answer that already matches your profile is accepted, and filtering your Mailbox by the kind of update works there too.
With Auto apply on, the info button beside your queue's counts now says each ready application is sent for you, and any job left for you to decide reads Waiting for you. If you send each one yourself, nothing goes out until you tap Apply. The filter row also says that Posted or found and Search only narrow the list in front of you: your saved search and your queue's total stay the same.
Otto can now read the cover letter an application shows and rewrite it from your own experience, even when the employer's form had no cover letter of its own. Ask him to make it shorter, more formal or closer to the job's wording, and Undo puts the previous version back.
Company and role pages now keep up with employers' current openings. 88 employers that were listed under a short code or an oddly split name now appear under the name they use themselves, for example Beth Israel Lahey Health and AutoZone, and four employers that had two pages each now have one. On phones, the company links in the monthly hiring pulse are easier to tap.
Open a search in the criteria dialog and it shows how many applications it brought, how many got a reply from a person and how many led to an interview invitation. Once a search has brought a lot of applications over a couple of weeks and nothing has come back, Otto offers to look over its job titles and opens that search for you. Not now hides it for that search for good.
On windows between a tablet and a laptop the prepared application cut its title mid-word and showed only a sliver of the Resume and Cover letter tabs. The title now keeps a readable column, and when the window is narrow the screen's controls move to their own row so every tab is reachable.
Pick "I'm not getting interviews" while cancelling and the dialog shows what came of your plan: the jobs you applied to, the replies people wrote and any interview invitations, with one button to where they wait. Pick "The jobs aren't a good fit" and it offers the list's own answers, and the one you pick opens the setting that changes it. Cancelling is unchanged, and you can ignore both.
When an employer writes about an interview for a role you applied to more than once, the email now attaches to the role it names, by the posting's link or the job title, level words and all. If it is not clear which role, the interview shows under the employer without naming one. If we still get it wrong, your thumbs-down fixes it at once and moves the email out.
The Queue used to call two different counts "Ready to apply": the jobs it had prepared for your review and the larger list of jobs you can apply to in one tap. The top count now reads "ready for you", and the info button beside it says how many are ready to review and how many are ready to apply, so each number tells you what it counts. Nothing else about your queue changed.
The Mac app's interview menu now includes interviews whose time is not set yet and ones more than two weeks away, alongside your next rounds. Choose one while a call is recording and the call is saved with that interview, with the round added at the time you recorded.
Your answers › About you now tells you whether new applications show your Applystead number or the phone you saved, and links straight to the setting where you choose. Applications already sent keep the number they went with.
When you reply by email to a message we forwarded, we check that the reply really came from you before passing it on. For some mail services that check can't finish by itself. Those replies now wait in your Mailbox: we email you, you tap Review and send, and the employer gets your reply from your Applystead address.
Assistant settings have two new boxes. Your context takes text you paste, such as your résumé or notes on the role, and the Assistant reads it with every answer. System prompt lets you replace the prompt we give the Assistant with your own, and go back to ours at any time. The Mac app has both under More, Prompt and context, from version 1.4.0: the app updates itself, or download it again.
When an interview is linked to one of your applications, its briefing now uses that job's description to say what the role asks for, instead of telling you no job description was saved. Interviews you already have pick it up the next time you open Applystead, and upcoming calls get a fresh briefing.
Applications are prepared and sent faster, and the page that lists them loads quickly. Your queue follows a changed search sooner. Replies from employers and video-interview requests reach your own inbox reliably, even if you have a very large application history.
The screens now draw the same way: choices in a popover, records in a panel that keeps your place, and the sidebar's search (⌘K, or Ctrl+K elsewhere) finds what the screen already holds. Today opens with what needs you, your day and your time budget, and is listed first when you have an interview, a job in your time budget or a calendar connected. Account is now Settings, with a search.
Employers ask how to reach you, often in their own words, from a phone number to whether texts are welcome. More of those questions are now answered from the details and choices you already gave us, so more of your applications can go out.
Mail sent to your Applystead address is now handled several messages at a time instead of one by one. Employer replies, interview invitations and verification codes usually show up in your Mailbox within seconds, even at busy times, instead of waiting in line. The sign-in and verification emails we send you also go out right away.
When an employer invites you to an assessment and you open that invitation later, the sign-in link or code it sends now appears in your Inbox instead of staying out of view. That includes an invitation you opened days after it arrived, up to 30 days.
A job you added by its link could disappear from your queue for good after you changed your search, your profile or a queue option. It now returns to your queue within minutes of the change, as long as your settings still allow it. Jobs that had dropped out this way are back.
Plans and free trials that end because we retired or changed them no longer open a 'what made you cancel?' question about a cancellation you never made. When a cancellation is your own, we still ask for an honest reason, and your answers go straight to the team.
While a domain you own is being connected for Applystead to handle its mail, its setup screen now says your applications, and the résumés we make for them, move to your new address on their own once it's connected, and use your current address until then. It also says the test message we send to your new address usually arrives within minutes, and that if it doesn't, we send another every hour.
Connected your own domain and kept your current inbox? You can now apply from a subdomain you keep just for your job search: open your domain in Mailbox settings, choose Apply from a subdomain and add the DNS records we list. Once it's live, you send from it in Applystead, employers see an address at your own domain and their mail comes to your Mailbox. Your usual inbox keeps working as before.
Links to jobs on a startup accelerator's company job pages, and to job pages that staffing and recruiting agencies share from their applicant portals, now find the job when you paste them into Add a job, instead of saying we can't apply on that site yet.
If your connection drops while you add your résumé during setup, we now tell you to check it and try again, and everything you entered stays in place. If a file you chose has changed or moved since you picked it, we name it and ask you to choose it again.
In Applications, Your answers has a new switch under Employer quizzes, Keep quizzes I'd take myself out of Next steps. Turn it on and quiz invitations that Applystead can't take for you are filed under Updates in your Mailbox instead of Next steps. Interview invitations and video steps stay in Next steps, and turning the switch off brings the filed ones back.
What's new in the app now has a board, Members who made it happen. It ranks members by how many shipped changes were built from their feedback and shows ranks and counts, with your own row marked You. Every change built from your feedback counts once it ships.
In Resume studio, Defaults has a new switch, Use the same base resume for a company. While it's on, a new application to a company you applied to in the last 30, 60, 90 or 180 days starts from the same resume as your latest application there, still tailored to the new job. A job you add by its link now uses the resume rule of the search that matches it.
If one of your searches takes remote jobs in a country where you told us you aren't authorized to work, Otto now points it out in your queue. Remote jobs there usually ask you to live in that country, so one tap opens that search's places for you to take it out. Remote jobs open to where you live stay in your search.
When your search has titles that name a field, such as Product Analyst, and also a broad one-word title, such as Analyst, Auto apply no longer applies to jobs that match only the broad title. With Auto apply off you still see those jobs, below the ones in your field.
Employer forms each word things their own way, including which agreements you accept. More of those questions are now answered from the details you already gave us, so more of your applications can go out.
A posting's own section headings, such as the heading above its list of responsibilities, are no longer picked up as skills on tailored resumes. The posting's keywords and skills still lead your Skills list as before.
Written answers on your applications are now built from whole sentences of your own experience. An answer is never pieced together from fragments or cut off partway through.
Opening your Calendar now adds up each week's hours once, rather than again for the month view and the agenda. The page starts loading a little sooner, and your Time budget shows the same numbers as before.
We changed which Applystead pages we ask Google to list. Our main pages, guides, tools and research stay listed; company, role and salary pages stay on the site and in other search engines. Nothing changes in your account, your queue or your applications.
Your Calendar now shows a Time budget: the hours in your week, how many go to meetings and interviews, and how many are open. Add the jobs you hold and their pay under Jobs and pay to see what a meeting hour of each is worth beside what an interview hour is worth. The same figures are on Interviews and your Dashboard, and connected assistants and the API can read them.
When you give a calendar to a job you hold under Jobs and pay, that job's meetings no longer fill Upcoming or the next event above your inbox. Interviews and events that came from your mail stay on the list, and invitation cards and free times still check your whole calendar.
What's new pages from before November 2 still describe the plans and prices we had on their day. Each now opens with a short note saying plans have since changed, with today's price, the free trial and a link to current pricing. Behind the scenes, search engines no longer list company pages that show a code instead of an employer's name.
The custom domain button in your Mailbox settings and in Membership now reads Set up custom domain for everyone, including during your free trial. Inside, you choose Get a new domain or Use a domain I own, so it's clear you can connect a domain you already have.