Employer guideRead at source, 3 September 2026
Employment Application Form: Free Template and What You Can (and Can’t) Ask in 2026
A paper or online employment application is still perfectly legal, and for a lot of frontline hiring it is still the right instrument. What has changed is the list of questions you may put on it. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia now restrict asking an applicant about pay history — and most of them also bar asking a former employer or a screening vendor, which is the part compliance checklists miss. Criminal history is gated in most of the country, cannabis questions are barred outright in California, and anything medical is off limits until after an offer. The template below is free to download and use; the table under it is the reason we built it, because a form that asks one prohibited question in one state is a form you cannot use anywhere.
Download the template
The PDF below is a fillable, printable employment application built to the rules in this page: no date of birth, no salary history, no criminal-history question on the form itself, no citizenship question beyond the one lawful attestation, and nothing medical. It has the fields a frontline employer actually needs — contact details, position and availability, work history, references, education and certifications where the role requires them, and the signature block that makes the rest enforceable.
Download the employment application template (PDF, fillable). Use it as it stands, or lift the field list into your own applicant tracking system. If you hire in California, Washington, Illinois or New York, have counsel look at it before you print a stack, because those four add requirements the others do not.
Field by field: allowed, restricted, prohibited
The useful way to read an application form is not question by question but stage by stage. Almost nothing is permanently forbidden; most of it is forbidden now and fine after an offer. The ADA is the clearest case: 42 U.S.C. 12112(d)(2) bars a pre-offer medical examination or any inquiry into whether an applicant has a disability or how severe it is, while expressly allowing questions about the ability to perform job-related functions. After an offer, the same statute permits a full medical examination, provided every entering employee gets one and the records live in a separate confidential file.
| Field | On the application? | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Name, address, phone, email | Yes | No restriction |
| Position, availability, shift | Yes | No restriction, and the most useful screening you can do at this stage |
| Work history and references | Yes | No restriction on asking. What a former employer may say back is a separate question |
| Ability to perform the job functions | Yes | Expressly permitted pre-offer, 42 U.S.C. 12112(d)(2)(B) |
| Date of birth or age | No | Not unlawful in itself federally, but it evidences age discrimination and several states restrict it. Ask only whether the applicant meets a lawful minimum age for the role |
| Salary or wage history | No | Restricted in 18 states and DC, and in most of them the ban reaches former employers and screening vendors too |
| Criminal history | Not on the form | Gated by ban-the-box laws in most of the country; California reaches the job advertisement itself |
| Cannabis use | No in California | California Government Code 12954(b) bars asking an applicant about prior cannabis use |
| Disability, medical history, workers compensation claims | No | Pre-offer medical inquiry is prohibited, 42 U.S.C. 12112(d)(2)(A) |
| Citizenship or immigration status | Not as phrased | Ask whether the applicant is legally authorised to work in the United States. Documentation belongs on the I-9, after hire |
| Social Security number | Not on the form | Not needed until hire or until a background check with FCRA authorisation. Collecting it early is data risk without benefit |
| Credit history | No | Restricted in a number of states, and a consumer report requires separate FCRA disclosure and authorisation |
| Signature and certification | Yes | The clause that makes falsification grounds for withdrawal or dismissal is the reason the form exists |
Salary history: eighteen states, and the trap in the nineteenth
This is the field most old application templates still carry, and it is now the most likely one to be unlawful. As of 3 September 2026, eighteen states and the District of Columbia restrict private employers from asking about or relying on an applicant pay history: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
Three things about that list are worth more than the count. First, most of these laws reach the third party, not just the applicant. Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Connecticut and DC all expressly bar seeking pay history from a current or former employer or through an agent. A form that omits the question while your background vendor asks it anyway is not compliant.
Second, the voluntary-disclosure safe harbour is not universal. Most states let you use what an applicant volunteers unprompted. Nevada carries no such exception in its text at all, and Oregon and Maine allow confirmation only after an offer has been made. Assuming the common rule in those three is how a compliant process becomes a claim.
Third, Alabama is on many published lists and does not belong there. The Clarke-Figures Equal Pay Act bars refusing to interview, hire, promote or employ someone because they will not provide wage history; it does not make the question itself unlawful. That is a meaningfully different rule, and treating Alabama as a ban state produces the wrong form for the wrong reason. Virginia is the newest genuine addition: Va. Code 40.1-28.7:12, in force since 1 July 2026, bars seeking wage or salary history and requires a wage or salary range in every posting, in one section. Most compliance lists written before mid-2026 still show Virginia as having nothing. Our pay transparency laws by state page covers the posting half of that same statute.
Two states forbid their own cities from acting
Wisconsin Statutes 103.36, created by 2017 Wisconsin Act 327, expressly permits an employer to solicit salary history, declares it a matter of statewide concern, and voids local ordinances to the contrary. Michigan reaches the same result through a broader preemption of local rules on what an employer may ask on an application or in an interview. Ohio has no such statute, which is why four Ohio cities have their own ordinances, Cleveland being the newest at 27 October 2025.
Check a question before it goes on the form
How long the form should be, and what we can prove about it
Every article about application length quotes a completion-rate cliff at some number of fields. We are not going to, because we have not run that test and the numbers in circulation trace back to studies whose method we cannot check. What we can say is narrower and more useful.
In our 2026 social job advertising benchmark, apply rate explains roughly 70 percent of the variation in cost per applicant across campaigns, more than click-through rate or CPM. Cost per applicant runs from $2.91 at the tenth percentile to $66.45 at the ninetieth, with a median of $13.88. Apply rate is the ratio of people who finish to people who click, and the application is most of what sits between those two numbers. So the length of the form is not a UX preference. It is the largest single lever on what an applicant costs you, and the benchmark says so without needing a completion-rate statistic we cannot source.
The practical shape that follows: collect at the application only what you would screen on, and move everything else to the offer stage where it is both lawful and cheap. Contact details, the role and shift, work authorisation as a yes or no, licences or certifications the job legally requires, and enough work history to have a conversation. Not the Social Security number, not references you will not call, not education for a role that does not need it, and not a question you are only asking because the old form had it.
| Paper form | Online form or ATS | Instant form in a social ad | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it is filled in | In store, on a clipboard | A career site, usually on a phone | Inside the social app, prefilled from the profile |
| Typical field count | Whatever fits two sides | Often too many, because fields are free to add | Deliberately short, plus knockout questions |
| Biggest failure mode | Never gets keyed in | Account creation and resume upload | Volume without qualification if you skip the knockouts |
| Compliance risk | Old questions survive on old stock | One template used across states | Knockout questions are inquiries like any other |
| Best for | Walk-in hiring and hiring events | Roles with real qualification requirements | High volume frontline roles where reach is the constraint |
One thing about the third column, since we sell it. A knockout question on a social instant form is an inquiry in exactly the same sense as a line on a paper form. If you cannot ask about criminal history on an application in your state, you cannot ask it in a knockout question either, and California reaches the advertisement itself. The right knockouts are the ones a paper form could carry: licence class and endorsements, availability for the shift, minimum age for the role, distance willing to travel. Our page on Meta special ad category covers what targeting you lose on employment ads and why qualification has to happen in the form rather than in the audience.
Estimate what your form is costing you
Where the rest of the detail lives
Four fields on that table are pages of their own here, because each carries a fifty-state answer that does not belong on a template page. Ban the box laws by state has the criminal-history gate positions, including the California rule that reaches the job advertisement. Drug testing laws by state covers the cannabis question and the states that protect lawful off-duty use. Form I-9 requirements is what happens after hire, and is the reason work authorisation on the application is a yes or no rather than a document. And what is a background check covers the FCRA authorisation the application does not give you.
Two more that pair with this one. Illegal interview questions is the spoken version of the same problem, and it is where most of the risk actually sits, because a form is reviewed once and an interview is improvised every time. The job description generator is the step before: the description sets what you may lawfully screen on, and a requirement that is not in the description is hard to defend as a screening criterion.
Frequently asked questions
Is a paper job application still legal?
Yes. No federal law requires an electronic application, and for walk-in hiring and hiring events a paper form is often the fastest route to a completed application. The risk is not the paper, it is the age of the questions on it. Old stock in a back room routinely carries a date of birth field, a salary history field and a criminal history box, all of which have become restricted in much of the country since the form was printed.
What must an employment application include?
Nothing is federally required. What makes an application worth having is the certification and signature block: a statement that the information is true, that falsification is grounds for withdrawal of an offer or dismissal, and consent to verify the information given. Beyond that, include only what you would actually screen on, because every additional field is paid for in applicants who do not finish.
Can I ask about criminal history on an application?
In much of the country, no. Ban the box laws move the inquiry to a later gate, and the gate position differs by state: after an initial screen, after an interview, or only after a conditional offer. California goes further and reaches the advertisement, so phrases such as no felons in a job ad are prohibited there. The safe default for a multistate employer is to keep the question off the form entirely and ask it at the conditional offer stage.
Can I ask for salary history?
Not in eighteen states or the District of Columbia. In most of those the ban also covers asking a current or former employer or a screening vendor, so removing the field from the form is not enough on its own. Nevada has no voluntary disclosure exception in its statute, and Oregon and Maine allow you to confirm history only after an offer. Ask about salary expectations instead, which is lawful everywhere and more useful.
Can I require a resume?
You can, and for most frontline roles you should not. A resume requirement excludes people who do not have one to hand on a phone, which in hourly hiring is a large share of qualified applicants, and it adds the single most abandonment-prone step in an online application. If you need the work history, ask for the last two employers as fields. If you need a resume for a specific role, ask for it after the first conversation.
How long do I have to keep applications?
Under 29 CFR 1602.14 an employer must preserve personnel and employment records, including application forms, for one year from the date of the record or the personnel action, whichever is later. If a discrimination charge is filed, all records relevant to the charge must be kept until final disposition, which means until the period for filing suit expires or the litigation ends. Federal contractors and some states have longer periods.
Can I ask for a Social Security number on the application?
You can in most places, and there is very little reason to. You do not need it to evaluate an applicant. You need it at hire for payroll and the I-9, and you need it for a background check, which requires its own written disclosure and authorisation under the Fair Credit Reporting Act rather than a line on a form. Collecting it from every applicant creates a data protection liability in exchange for nothing.
Can I ask an applicant how old they are?
Asking date of birth is not itself unlawful under federal law, but it is evidence in an age discrimination claim and several states restrict it. Where the role has a lawful minimum age, whether from a child labor rule, a licence, or a rule about operating equipment or serving alcohol, ask whether the applicant meets that age. That gets you the answer you actually need without collecting the one you do not.
The form is only half of it. The other half is who sees the ad.
A short, compliant application is worth very little if the wrong people reach it. Bring the roles and the markets you hire in, and we will show you what a qualified applicant has actually cost there.
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