The seven screener questions you keep answering

The short answer

Screener questions look different on every form because every employer writes its own wording, but strip the wording away and there are only seven questions being asked: are you authorized to work here, will you need sponsorship, where are you and would you relocate, how did you hear about this role, have you worked here before, and a closing pair of EEO and demographic questions. Answer each one well a single time and you have effectively answered it for every application that comes after.

Why the wording changes but the question does not

One company asks "are you legally authorized to work in the United States." Another asks "do you have unrestricted authorization to work in the country where this role is based." A third folds it into a dropdown with four options instead of a yes or no. All three are the same question, work authorization, wearing different clothes. Employers are not coordinating on phrasing. They are independently asking about the same handful of things every employer legally and practically needs to know before it can move you forward, so the underlying list converges even when nobody agreed on the words.

The seven, one at a time

Work authorization. A yes or no question about your legal right to work, not an invitation to explain your visa history in the text box. It is one of the two most consequential answers on the whole form, since getting it wrong, even accidentally, can end the process before a human ever reads your resume. The plain version of what it is really asking, and how to answer it, is in answering the work authorization question.

Sponsorship. A separate, related question about whether you will need sponsorship now or at some point in the future. It is easy to conflate with work authorization and easy to answer in a way that reads worse than your actual situation if you have not thought about the phrasing in advance. That one gets its own full treatment in the sponsorship question, answered plainly.

Location and relocation. Where you are, and whether you would move. Sometimes a zip code, sometimes a state dropdown, sometimes a direct question about relocating or working from a specific office. This is a filter question more than an informational one: a mismatched answer here often ends a process quietly, before you ever hear back, rather than triggering an explicit rejection.

Referral source. How did you hear about this role. It reads like small talk. It is actually routing, since the option you choose can change who looks at your application first and how quickly, particularly when a named referral is one of the choices.

Prior employment. Have you worked here before, sometimes extended to contractor or intern status. A rehire check more than anything else, there to catch a returning employee or a past contractor rather than to test your memory.

EEO and demographic questions. A closing set near the bottom of almost every form, asking about things like gender, race, veteran status, and disability status. These exist for reasons that have nothing to do with any single hiring decision, and declining to answer is built into the form as a real, consequence-free option. What they are actually for, and who does and does not see your answers, is covered fully in what the EEO questions are actually for.

Not all seven cost the same amount of thought

Some of these seven are nearly frictionless once you know your answer: work authorization and prior employment are almost always a clean yes or no, decided by fact rather than judgment. Others involve a real choice every time, not because the facts change, but because the honest answer depends on circumstances that shift slightly from role to role. Sponsorship can hinge on the specific visa category a role qualifies for. Location and relocation can hinge on how much you actually want this particular job. Referral source depends on how you genuinely found each posting, which is different every time by definition. Treating all seven as equally mechanical is how people end up rushing the two or three that actually deserve a moment's thought.

Why exactly these seven

None of these seven are arbitrary. Work authorization and sponsorship exist because an employer cannot legally move forward without knowing them. Location and relocation exist because a role tied to a specific office cannot be filled by someone who will not be there. Referral source exists because employers track which channels actually produce hires, and pay attention to which ones do not. Prior employment exists because rehire policies and eligibility rules are real things a system needs to check. EEO and demographic questions exist for reporting obligations that sit above any individual hiring decision entirely. Every one of them is doing a specific job, which is exactly why the same seven show up again and again instead of some new set inventing itself on every company's form.

The list above reflects how these questions show up on the boards we track, most of them companies hiring in the United States. The seven themselves map onto concerns nearly any employer has, so even where the exact wording or legal basis changes elsewhere, the underlying shape tends to travel.

Treat this as a one-time cost

The practical value of knowing there are only seven is that you can stop treating every new application as a blank page. Write a real answer to each of these seven once, thought through rather than rushed, and then reuse that answer, adjusted only when a question is phrased differently enough to need it. That is a fundamentally different amount of work than starting from nothing on your thirtieth application the same way you did on your first.

That does not mean every answer stays frozen forever. Circumstances change: a visa status resolves, you move, you decide you are open to relocating after all. When something genuinely changes, update the answer once, the same way you wrote it the first time, and it stays accurate for every application after that too.

These seven sit on top of a shorter set of fields that show up just as reliably, your name, contact information, and resume, covered in full in what ATS application forms actually ask for. Between the two, most of what any given form asks you is already, in some sense, a question you have answered before.

iapplyai.app writes an answer to each of these seven from your resume and your profile the first time it prepares an application for you, then reuses and adjusts that answer every time the question shows up again, worded differently, on the next one.