It may be a little late for this hiring season, but adding an employment application to your Squarespace website has just gotten A LOT easier. Squarespace recently announced a much anticipated update—the ability to upload files to forms.

What does this mean for your employment application?

Well, it means you can create a Squarespace form for applicants to fill out and then ask them to upload their resume or cover letter before they submit the application.

In the past, I’ve helped farms with various work-arounds for employment applications, from “just email us if you’re interested in applying” to “download this fillable pdf and email it back to us with your resume”. Or some farms have chosen to go the Wufoo route, connecting potential employees to an application form that’s completely separate from their website.

These options all work just fine, but a Squarespace form that allows for file uploads will be more streamlined for you and easier for potential employees, allowing them to just fill out the application on your website.

We all know that hiring seasonal employees is a huge challenge, so making it as easy as possible to get applications seems like a big win.

So, how do you create your employment application with file upload?

To start with, you’ll add a new section and form block to your employment page. Adding the form block in its own section will make it easier to format the whole page and will keep your mobile view looking cleaner.

Next you’ll start customizing your new form.

I always start by renaming the form so when submissions come into my email inbox I know immediately which form I’m dealing with. 

I’ll call our new form “employment application”.

Now we’ll edit the form fields.

Remember to make fields “required” so applicants give you all the info you need.

The last field you’ll add is the “file upload”. Once you add it to your form, you’ll need to click into it to customize it as needed. Here I have changed the label to say “Please upload your resume and cover letter”, I’ve made it required, and I have increased the max number of files to two, so that applicants can upload both a resume and cover letter.

Next, you’ll want to update the post submit message.

I recommend letting applicants know how and when you will be in touch with them and inviting them to reach out with any questions.

Then you’ll need to set the storage for your form, making sure that email notifications go directly to an email address that you check regularly.

And finally, save your work and go to the front end of your website to test the form out.

Make sure it all looks good, the file upload works, and that the submission goes into your inbox.

For security reasons, Squarespace requires you to be logged into your Squarespace account in order to access any files that have been uploaded to a form submission. Once you open the attached files you can download and save them to your computer.

PLEASE NOTE: if you use a personal email address (like yourfarmname@gmail.com) to reply to form submissions it is more likely that your email will end up in the applicant's spam folder. I highly recommend copying and pasting their email address and starting a new email thread rather than responding directly to the form. If you use a professional email address that is linked to your domain name (like info@yourfarmname.com) this shouldn’t be a problem.

So, good luck creating your employment application forms!

As always, be in touch if you have questions or if you get stuck with any of it (or if you just don’t have time to do it yourself).