Everything explained about reading data in the “Reading jobs section” also applies to reading applications.

Go back to “reading Jobs”

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Be aware of which applications are tracked

To minimize the amount of sensitive data synced, by default we will only sync and refresh data about applications that were created by you (that is, via’s Kombo Create application endpoint).

🔭 That means, when connecting a new customer, you will initially receive an empty array for the candidates and applications (until you create an application or candidate through the Kombo API).

You can find more info in the Application tracking feature page.

​
Hiring signals

To be able to see which of your submitted applications end up getting hired/rejected/etc. we provide you an outcome field on each application. The value of this field is calculated by us, based on the specifics of each ATS.

The possible values are HIRED, DECLINED or PENDING

You can also use the outcomes query param to filter for only applications of a certain type.

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://api.kombo.dev/v1/ats/applications?outcomes=HIRED%2CDECLINED' \
  --header 'Authorization: <authorization>' \
  --header 'X-Integration-Id: join:HWUTwvyx2wLoSUHphiWVrp28'

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "next": "eyJwYWdlIjoxMiwibm90ZSI6InRoaXMgaXMganVzdCBhbiBleGFtcGxlIGFuZCBub3QgcmVwcmVzZW50YXRpdmUgZm9yIGEgcmVhbCBjdXJzb3IhIn0=",
    "results": [
      {
        "id": "26vafvWSRmbhNcxJYqjCzuJg",
        "remote_id": "32",
        "outcomes": "HIRED",
        ...
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

​
Application stage changes

If you want to keep track of updates during the application process you can check whether the stage of the application has changed.

First, please note that in many ATS, each job can have a custom hiring process (i.e. can have a custom configuration of application stages). You can find the stages for each job on the stages property when calling the “Get jobs” endpoint.

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "next": "eyJwYWdlIjoxMiwibm90ZSI6InRoaXMgaXMganVzdCBhbiBleGFtcGxlIGFuZCBub3QgcmVwcmVzZW50YXRpdmUgZm9yIGEgcmVhbCBjdXJzb3IhIn0=",
    "results": [
      {
        "id": "26vafvWSRmbhNcxJYqjCzuJg",
        "remote_id": "32",
        "name": "Backend Engineer",
        ...,
        "stages": [
          {
            "id": "3PJ8PZhZZa1eEdd2DtPNtVup",
            "remote_id": "32",
            "name": "Initial Screening",
            "index": 0
          },
          {
            "id": "HWUTwvyx2wLoSUHphiWVrp28",
            "remote_id": "38",
            "name": "Interview",
            "index": 0
          },
        ],
      }
    ]
  }
}

Then, when you fetch the applications via the “get applications” endpoint, you will get the current_stage_id and current_stage properties for each application. the current_stage is just an expanded version of the current_stage_id so you can use either of them.

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "next": "eyJwYWdlIjoxMiwibm90ZSI6InRoaXMgaXMganVzdCBhbiBleGFtcGxlIGFuZCBub3QgcmVwcmVzZW50YXRpdmUgZm9yIGEgcmVhbCBjdXJzb3IhIn0=",
    "results": [
      {
        "id": "26vafvWSRmbhNcxJYqjCzuJg",
        "remote_id": "32",
        ...
        "current_stage_id": "5J7L4b48wBfffYwek9Az9pkM",
        ...
        "current_stage": {
          "id": "5J7L4b48wBfffYwek9Az9pkM",
          "remote_id": "32",
          "name": "Initial Screening"
        },
      }
    ]
  }
}

To see whether the stage of an application has changed, you have to implement some tracking logic on your end by calling the “get applications” endpoint with the updated_after filter and then comparing the stage of each candidate with the stage you currently have in your system.

​
ATS-specific limitations

Some tools don’t support reading applications or hiring outcomes at all due to technical limitations. For best practices on how to handle this, see this section.

Creating applicationsFAQ