That’s how it is. Once they submit the application, only moderators with proper permission can view and approve/reject. This is pretty clear in the file description:
“Permission: NO ONE except staff (with proper permisison) will be able to view/read or know who are the applicants. All that regular members will know is the number of users who applied to it.”
I’m not sure I understand this. The category forum setting is to post the OPEN POSITION when someone creates one. It doesn’t make a post when someone applies to an open position. Explain it better if that’s not what you mean.
See Category, View Applications, etc. are categories permissions. To allow/disallow moderators to approve/reject applications, you should go to ACP -> Members -> Moderators-> edit the member or group, find the tab of this app and enable the permission:
That’s the form you will see when you’re trying to approve/reject an application:
The editor is there with the option to send a private message to the applicant.