Job application status meanings: what Workday, LinkedIn and Indeed are actually telling you

What 'In progress', 'Under consideration', 'Not retained' and 'Response seems unlikely' really mean, who set each status, and the follow-up date to put in your tracker.

You had the interview on Tuesday. On Friday the portal still says "In progress", exactly as it did the day you applied. Did anything happen? Did they already pick someone else?

Most guides answer by guessing what the label means. This one starts from the documentation the portals publish, because a status is a label that someone set up, and what it tells you depends on who set it. Below: every status Indeed, LinkedIn and several Workday employers document, what each one likely means, and the tracker stage and follow-up date to give it.

First question: who changed the status?

A status on a candidate portal is not a note a recruiter typed about you. It is a display label mapped to a step in the employer's hiring workflow, and the employer decides the mapping. The vendors say so themselves:

SAP SuccessFactors keeps two labels per status: an internal one for recruiters and a "candidate label" for what applicants see. Its own example is the internal status "Interview", shown to candidates as "In Progress" (SAP KBA 2536174).
Workday, as configured at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shows "Application Status: In Progress" for every active stage after the first review: interview, assessment and employment agreement all look the same to the candidate. HR at the university also notes that changing a candidate's status, "including removing them from consideration or closing the Job Requisition, does not send them any kind of notification/communication" (UW–Madison HR).
Greenhouse tells candidates that its portal "doesn't show every internal hiring step" and that "a status may stay the same until the hiring team shares a new update" (MyGreenhouse FAQ).

So "In progress" the day after your interview is expected. On a portal set up like SAP's example or UW–Madison's, you would see the same words if you were the front-runner, if you were still being compared with two other people, or if the offer was being approved. The label is too coarse to answer the question. Your inbox is not.

Indeed goes further and tells you who set each status. On Indeed, some statuses come from you, some from the employer, and some from Indeed itself, inferred from the employer's activity (Indeed Help: My Jobs). Before reading anything into a status, ask which of the three changed it.

Indeed statuses

Indeed documents eleven statuses and sorts them by who sets them. The wording below is Indeed's.

Status	Set by	What it means	Tracker stage	Follow-up
Applied	Indeed	"You submitted an application."	Applied	7–10 days after applying
Employer reviewing applications	Indeed	The employer is reviewing applications "but has not reviewed yours yet."	Applied	Keep the same date
Application viewed	Employer	"The employer reviewed your application."	Applied	Keep the same date
Employer reached out	Employer	"The employer contacted you through Indeed."	Interviewing, if it is a call or interview	Reply the same day
Not selected by employer	Employer	"The employer rejected your application."	Rejected	None
Response seems unlikely	Indeed	The employer "has already hired enough candidates", or there has been "no activity on your application for at least two weeks"	Ghosted	One last follow-up, then close it
Job closed	Indeed	"The employer closed the job, or the job expired."	Unchanged	Follow up once if you were interviewing
Interviewing, Offer received, Hired, No longer interested	You	Your own record of what happened	Same as the status	Depends on the stage

Three things in this table are worth knowing:

"Response seems unlikely" is Indeed's guess, not the employer's decision. Two weeks without activity is enough to trigger it. It is a good moment for one short follow-up, and a good reason to stop waiting.
"Interviewing" can be a status you set yourself. If you see it, check whether it was you before reading it as good news.
Most of these only exist for jobs posted on Indeed. "Statuses updated by the employer or by Indeed are usually only available for jobs posted directly on Indeed. If you applied on another site, you may not see these statuses." When the Apply button sent you to a company careers site, the real status lives there.

LinkedIn statuses: Easy Apply or company site

LinkedIn's Job tracker has five stages: saved, in progress, applied, interview and archive. How they move depends on how you applied (LinkedIn Help: job tracker):

For Easy Apply jobs, "these stages will update automatically when you start or submit an application."
For jobs where you apply on the company site, "you can manually move these jobs to track progress."

In other words, "Applied" on an external job is your own bookmark. LinkedIn does not know what happened on the employer's site, and nothing on LinkedIn will change when the employer rejects or invites you.

For Easy Apply jobs, LinkedIn can show more, as long as the employer's applicant tracking system is connected to it. LinkedIn's documentation for ATS vendors lists the statuses an applicant can see, and the action inside the employer's ATS that triggers each one (LinkedIn Apply Connect docs):

Status	Triggered when	Tracker stage	Follow-up
Application submitted	LinkedIn receives your application	Applied	7–10 days after applying
Application viewed	The application record is viewed in the employer's ATS	Applied	Keep the same date
Resume downloaded	Your resume is downloaded or opened in a document viewer in the ATS	Applied	Keep the same date
Application screened	The application moves into the screening stage	Applied	Keep the same date
Application interviewed	You move to the interview stage	Interviewing	The day after the date they gave
Application hired	You are hired for the role	Offer	None
Application rejected	The application is rejected in the ATS; the email arrives after 72 hours	Rejected	None

Two caveats. LinkedIn only sends these if the employer ticked the "Applicant notifications" box when connecting its ATS, so silence proves nothing. And a view is only a view: "An application view or a resume download doesn't guarantee that you'll receive a message, interview, or job offer from the job poster" (LinkedIn Help).

If your LinkedIn applications get views and nothing else, the profile behind them is the next thing to check. Our guide to optimising your LinkedIn profile covers what recruiters see when they open it.

Workday statuses: the employer picks the words

Workday is where most of the confusion comes from, because every employer configures its own candidate-facing labels. Here is how three employers document theirs. Read them as examples of a pattern, not as Workday's wording.

Status (employer)	What it means there	Tracker stage	Follow-up
Submitted (UW–Madison)	Your application is in the first review	Applied	7–10 days after applying
In Progress (UW–Madison)	Any active stage: interview, assessment or employment agreement	Applied or Interviewing, by what your inbox says	The day after the date they gave
Completed (UW–Madison)	Declined for any reason except withdrawal, or the requisition was cancelled	Rejected	None
In Progress (University of Washington)	HR is checking your resume "for minimum qualifications and eligibility"	Applied	7–10 days after applying
Sent to dept (University of Washington)	HR passed your resume to the hiring manager	Applied	Keep the same date
Not selected (University of Washington)	Rejected, at any point "during UWHR review or during hiring manager review"	Rejected	None
Recruitment Canceled (University of Washington)	The position "will not be filled"	Rejected	None
Not Pursuing (Geisinger)	The hiring manager declined you, before or after an interview	Rejected	None

Sources: UW–Madison HR, University of Washington, Geisinger Workday training guide.

Look at the same event across the three. A rejection reads "Completed" at one employer, "Not selected" at the second and "Not Pursuing" at the third. "In Progress" means an HR eligibility check at one and possibly a final interview at another. Anyone who gives you a single meaning for a Workday status is describing one employer's setup.

"In progress" after an interview

This is the most searched status question, and the answer follows from the tables above. On setups like UW–Madison's, every stage after the first review displays as "In Progress", so the label cannot move after an interview even when things are moving inside. Workday's own careers page warns that its hiring process "can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to potentially longer" (Workday careers).

What to do instead of refreshing the portal:

At the end of the interview, ask when they expect to decide. Write that date in your tracker.
If the date passes with no news, send one short email to the recruiter the next day. If they gave no date, wait a week.
Move the job to Rejected when you get the email or when the status changes to a closing label, not before.

The interview preparation guide has the questions to ask at the end of an interview, including the one about next steps.

"Under consideration"

Many candidates report seeing "Under consideration" on Workday portals, but it is an employer's label, not a term Workday defines for candidates. We found no Workday or employer documentation that pins it down. The guides that rank for it disagree: some say a person reviewed you, others say it confirms nothing.

Treat it the way the configured examples above suggest: you are still active on the requisition, and the portal is not telling you more than that. Keep the job in Applied and keep your follow-up date.

Greenhouse, SuccessFactors and Taleo

Portal	Status	What the vendor says	Tracker stage	Follow-up
Greenhouse	Active	The default after you apply	Applied	7–10 days after applying
Greenhouse	Inactive	Set after the rejection email is sent, or "4 days after the date of the rejection, if no email is scheduled or sent"	Rejected	None
SAP SuccessFactors	In Progress	Whatever the employer mapped to it; SAP's own example is the Interview stage	Applied or Interviewing	Keep the same date
Oracle Taleo	Complete	"A candidate has completed his/her job application"	Applied	7–10 days after applying

Sources: MyGreenhouse application tracking, SAP KBA 2536174, Oracle Taleo documentation.

Two traps in there. Greenhouse's "Inactive" is a rejection, and "candidates are not notified about the change". And Taleo's default "Complete" means your application form is complete. It says nothing about the hiring process being over. Taleo employers can replace it with a custom label for each step of their workflow, so on some Taleo portals you will see more precise wording.

"Not retained" and other ways to say no

"Not retained" means the employer will not take your application further for this job. It is a rejection for this one role, not a note on your file for future ones.

The English phrase shows up mostly on portals with a French-speaking origin or audience, and it reads like a word-for-word translation of the French "candidature non retenue". The CNRS, France's national centre for scientific research, uses exactly that status on its job portal, next to "Candidature en cours d'examen" (under review) and "Candidature sélectionnée" (selected) (CNRS Portail Emploi).

The same answer comes under many names. From the sources in this article alone: Not selected, Not selected by employer, Not Pursuing, Completed, Inactive, Application rejected. Some public employers are more precise. The Government of the Northwest Territories separates "Screened Out" (you did not meet the screening criteria) from "Screened In - Not Short Listed" (you met them, but will not move forward) (GNWT status definitions). If your portal makes that distinction, "screened in" is worth knowing: your resume passed, and the competition was strong.

What to do after any of them: move the job to Rejected, note the stage where it happened, and ask for feedback only if you reached an interview. A rejection at the screening stage with no human contact usually points at the resume rather than at you. The guide to ATS filters explains what software can miss in it.

A closed job is not always a rejection

"Job closed", "Recruitment Canceled", a posting that vanished: none of these necessarily says anything about you.

Indeed treats "Job closed" as its own status: "the employer closed the job, or the job expired."
In Workday, closing a requisition only rejects the remaining candidates if the employer set it up that way. Workday's documentation says it "can automatically decline all candidates who were not hired" once a disposition reason is mapped to the close step (Workday documentation).
LinkedIn stops accepting applications when a post closes and removes it from search (LinkedIn Help). It does not say that applicants are told.

A job can close because someone was hired, because the budget was frozen, or because it expired and will be reposted. If you had an interview, one email asking where things stand is fair. If you did not, move on and watch for a repost.

Map every status to one stage and one date

The tables above come down to a simple rule: whatever the portal says, your tracker needs one stage and one next date. Six stages cover every status in this article.

Your stage	Portal statuses that belong here	Next date to set
Applied	Applied, Application submitted, Submitted, In Progress (before any interview), Application viewed, Resume downloaded, Sent to dept, Active, Complete	7–10 days after applying
Interviewing	Employer reached out, Application interviewed, In Progress after an interview	The day after the decision date they gave you
Offer	Offer received, Application hired	The deadline to answer
Rejected	Not selected, Not Pursuing, Completed, Inactive, Application rejected, Not retained, Candidature non retenue	None. Note the stage it happened at
Ghosted	Response seems unlikely, or no reply after your follow-up	One last follow-up, then archive
Saved	Draft, or a job you have not applied to yet	The posting's closing date

If you track in a spreadsheet, our free job application tracker template uses the same six stages and fills in the follow-up date for you.

The 7–10 day follow-up is our rule of thumb for a first application, not a rule any portal enforces. Give it a few more days when the application went through a long automated form. The job application tracker guide has the four-line follow-up email to send when the date comes.

Tracking statuses in HiredFolio

The HiredFolio job application tracker uses those six stages: Saved, Applied, Interviewing, Offer, Rejected and Ghosted. Each job has a follow-up date, and the morning it comes due you get an email listing the follow-ups for that day. That is the point of this whole glossary: a portal status only matters if it changes your stage or your next date.

The HiredFolio Chrome extension saves a job from LinkedIn, Indeed or a company careers page in one click, with the title, company and full description filed in your tracker. When the portal changes its status, you update one field instead of hunting for the posting again.

Track your applications in HiredFolio

Key takeaways before you refresh the portal again

Check who set the status first: you, the employer or the job board. Only the employer's changes are news.

Ask for a decision date at the end of every interview and put it in your tracker, because "In progress" will not move on its own.

Give every application one stage and one follow-up date, and follow up once when the date comes.

The follow-up email is the next thing you will need: copy the four-line template.