“Are you willing to work in the office?” — how employers actually ask it
The wording carries the policy: what a form offers as options says more about the arrangement than the advert usually does. We read the application forms of 123 employers that ask it — 834 instances in all — from their own public job-board APIs. This is what the question looks like in practice.
What it is checking
Asks how often you would work from an office. Answers are usually a fixed list matching the arrangement the role is advertised under.
The shape of the answer
76% of these forms give you a fixed list rather than a text box, and 58% of what those lists offer is nothing but yes and no. There is usually nowhere on the form to explain a situation, so the choice is the whole answer. 97% are marked required.
| Option offered | Times it appears |
|---|---|
| Yes | 419 |
| No | 416 |
| Florida | 61 |
| Massachusetts | 61 |
| New Jersey | 61 |
| North Carolina | 61 |
| Oregon | 61 |
| Virginia | 61 |
| Connecticut | 60 |
| Maryland | 60 |
| Missouri | 60 |
| New York | 60 |
323 distinct options appear across the corpus. The long tail is mostly one employer listing every permit type it recognises.
306 ways of asking the same thing
The wording matters more than it looks: two forms can ask about the same fact and accept different answers. These are the most common, with the number of employers using each — the form's own words, not a paraphrase.
| Question, as the form words it | Employers |
|---|---|
| In which City and State do you currently reside in? | 3 |
| What state do you currently live in? | 3 |
| Do you currently live in the United States? | 2 |
| Do you currently reside in Arizona? | 2 |
| From where do you intend to work? | 2 |
| What City do you currently live in? | 2 |
| What City do you live in? | 2 |
| What US state do you reside in? | 2 |
| What city do you currently reside in? | 2 |
| Which US state do you reside in? | 2 |
| Which state do you reside in? | 2 |
| Applicants must reside and work in the state of North Carolina to be considered for this position. What city and state do you reside in? | 1 |
Employers whose exact wording we have
Each of these pages lists every question on that employer's form, including this one.
8am · Adyen · Affirm · Airbnb · Airtable · Alpha 9 Oncology · Alphasense · Ambiq Micro · Amca · Amplitude · Amyris · Anthropic · Asana · Ascend · Assemblyai · Astranis · Axial · Axon · Bevi · Bill · Bitgo · Blockchain Com · Boku · Boulder Care · Box · Brex · Bybit · Calendly · Carbon Direct · Carbonchain · Centrum Health · Chime Financial · Circleci · Cloudflare · Cockroach · Culture Amp · Degreed · Elastic · Enova International · Eve · Figma · Fin · Fireblocks · Flock Homes · Galileo · General Assembly · Genius · Genius Ai · Ghx · Ginkgo Bioworks · Gitlab · Gocardless · Gofundme · Grafana · Harness · Headspace · Headspace Providers · House Rx · Instacart · Kiwico · Knock · Komodo Health · Lab37 · Layerzero · Lithic · Ltse · Magic Leap · Mallory Alexander · Mercury · Mixpanel · Modern Health · N26 · Natera · Netlify · Neuehealth · New Relic · Newsela · Nourish · Nuro · Omada Health · Optimal Dynamics · Oshi Health · Outschool · Ownwell · Pacaso · Pagerduty · Pave · Peregrine · Persefoni Ai · Pinwheel · Podium · Pomelo Care · Postman · Premier Medical · Prodigal · Prolific · Razorpay Software Private · Robinhood · Roofstock · Runwise · Samsara · Sidecar Health · Sourcegraph · Sovrn · Squarespace · Star Catcher · Stockx · Stripe · Stubhub · Sumo Logic · Tanium · Tenable · Udacity · Upgrade · Upslide · Urban Sports Club · Vercel · Verisign · Viam · Webflow · Wholesail · Wonderschool · Wrike
What this page does not tell you
It does not tell you what to answer. What is true for you is not visible from a job board, and a confident steer on a question about your right to work — or on a contract you have signed — would be worth less than nothing. What is here is what the form will put in front of you, so that nothing on it is a surprise.
Nor does it say whether any employer filters on the answer. Whether a form's answers are used that way is not published by any of these job boards, and the honest position is that we cannot see it.