The Deep Dive: Tick tock, tick tock - why timing is everything when it comes to posting your jobs

In this special deep dive on the relationship between timing, job posting and applications, I’ll look at the vital importance of knowing the best times to post jobs, why time to apply metrics are crucial when understanding job posting timing, and how job scheduling can help to net you significantly more applications.

Why time really is of the essence when job posting

As a recruiter, what do you do to try and increase applications to your jobs?

Write a compelling job advert that draws candidates in, engages them and contains all the information they need to be able to make a decision on whether to apply?

Brilliant 👍

Advertise your job on your website as well as on a mix of carefully chosen job boards?

Even better 🤩

These are both crucial elements to get right.

However, neither will help sufficiently if you’re not posting your jobs out at the right time, when candidates are actively searching.

Miss those windows and you dramatically reduce the likelihood of candidates even seeing your ads, let alone applying for them.

Rethink your idea of ‘best time’

In many ways, time is king in the recruitment industry.

The faster you find candidates, the faster you can shortlist, the faster you can get to interviews, the faster a placement can be made.

Time really is money in recruitment.

However, sometimes time isn’t all about speed but about timing – finding the right time for the best results.

Wave has recently revealed data in its most recent Recruitment Trends Report that strongly indicates that scheduling your jobs to post at the right time (on which it also has a raft of data) will increase your application rate by an impressive amount.

It is so tempting in such a fast-paced industry to post your job out as soon as it is ready but that might not give it the exposure it needs for decent applications.

The best time is not always the quickest time.

Candidates apply soon after jobs are posted

Wave’s data shows that, for both weekly and 6-week listings, the majority of applications were sent soon after the job was posted.

For 7-day listings, 25% of applications were received within 24 hours of a job being posted and 23% were received within 48 hours. The numbers drop off with each passing day.

For listings of 30-42 days, the highest percentages were received within 48 hours, significantly dropping off as the month progresses.

As the majority of applications are sent very soon after a job is posted, it is crucial that your job ads are posted when candidates are online and actively looking for jobs.

Miss that window and applications will drop off because the number of candidates that will even see them will dramatically reduce.

Why?

Job board algorithms prioritise the most recently posted jobs.

If you post your jobs after the greatest amount of candidate activity has occurred it could be days before significant numbers of candidates are searching the job board, by which point your job will be further down the search results.

This could mean the difference between your job being posted on page 1 or 21 when qualified candidates are looking.

Think the beginning of the week, the beginning of the day

In general, candidates like searching for jobs and getting their applications out of the way early.

The trend is for applications to be received at the beginning of the day and the beginning of the week.

There also may be a spot of start of the week blues that prompt people to search for another job then. There’s a reason Reed.co.uk’s Love Mondays campaign was so popular!

Wave data shows that the highest percentage of applications are received on Mondays and Tuesdays, with that percentage slowly dropping as the week wanes.

This is a trend that we have observed for several years, dispelling the myth that candidates apply for jobs over the weekend.

In fact, just 9% of applications are received on Saturdays and Sundays compared to 18% on Mondays and Tuesdays.

You can see why scheduling your jobs to post at the times when candidates are actively searching for jobs will lead to an uplift in applications – if you post a job on a Friday, that is a full three days before most candidates are online and looking for jobs so they may not even see your advert.

When it comes to the time of day you should be posting your jobs, the majority of candidates are applying between 10am and 1pm and not after work hours.

They could be job searching and applying in their lunch hour and, with so many working from home at least part of the week, they could be taking a break mid-morning to send in an application.

What this indicates is that jobs should be scheduled to post early morning, at 8am or 9am, so that they are up just before the majority of candidates are applying.

What our data shows is that most jobs are actually posted at 11am but posting at that time could miss a number of candidates who are active at 10am.

BUT shift-based industries don’t follow the general trend…

Like with anything, general trends don’t always give the full picture.

We’ve noticed that industries with jobs that tend to be shift-based are more evenly spread out when it comes to applications.

Health & Nursing, Manufacturing, and Catering & Hospitality break the pattern.

Health & Nursing, for example, receives a relatively high percentage of applications on a Sunday. 14% of all applications are received on Sundays, higher than Saturday and Friday, level with Thursday and only just under Wednesday.

This could be because of the shift pattern nature of many Health & Nursing jobs and indicates that more jobs should perhaps be posted on a Sunday in this industry – currently only 0.5% are.

The vast majority of jobs are posted on Mondays, which, jointly with Tuesdays, are when the majority of applications are received. However, those searching and applying on a Sunday will find it harder to find jobs that are posted nearly a week prior.

There’s a similar pattern when it comes to applications by times of day for Health & Nursing jobs.

The highest percentage of applications are received at 12pm but candidates are fairly consistently active throughout the day from around 9am and into the evening until 9pm.

In fact, application activity continues right into the night. Again, this is likely due to the shift nature of many roles in the industry.

The majority of jobs are posted from 9am to 11am, which tallies well with when the bulk of the application activity begins.

Manufacturing – another industry with a number of shift-based jobs – also bucks the general trend, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday also seeing decent application activity. Applications by time of day show a similar trend to Health & Nursing, with activity fairly consistent across the day, from 9am up until around 9pm.

We can see a similar pattern with Catering & Hospitality, another industry with a fair number of roles that won’t involve your typical 9-5. The majority of applications (just) are at the beginning of the week but there are consistent applications coming in across the week and at the weekend. The greatest percentage of applications are received early evening rather than midday and continue right up until midnight.

When you know when to post, scheduling jobs makes sense (and the data proves that posting at the right time works!)

So, you know when you should be posting but you don’t want to have to remember to do it at the right times every single time.

Enter the mighty job scheduling tool!

Schedule your job to be posted at the right time, whenever that is, and you don’t have to worry about it again.

And the data proves it works.

As an average across all industries, the number of applications per scheduled job is 27 in comparison to just 15 received for unscheduled jobs.

That’s an average of 12 more applications per job and a huge percentage increase of 80% if you schedule a job rather than post it straight out.

At a more granular, industry-specific level, these numbers vary but the majority experience a significant uplift in applications for scheduled jobs.

For Travel, Leisure & Tourism, for example, the average number of applications jumps from 14 for unscheduled jobs to a massive 109 for scheduled jobs.

It can be incredibly tempting to get your jobs out as soon they’re written (that time pressure ticking away in your brain!) but what this points to is the huge advantage of posting jobs at the right time, not necessarily the fastest time.

And this can be easily done by knowing when the best time to post your jobs is and scheduling your jobs to post at those times.

Want to explore this topic more? We recommend:

📖 Wave Q3 2023 Recruitment Trends Report: The importance of time and job scheduling when posting job adverts

✍️ Right time, right place, right content: how data can help you to target the right candidates