Job adverts cost money, and no recruiter wants to be at an economic disadvantage by posting job openings during times few people would see it. Any online marketing professional would tell you that the effectiveness of adverts depends on the timing—the best time to target the attention of the exact consumer demography for the product.
Therefore, this “best time” principle also applies to us recruiters when posting openings on your company’s job boards and social media. Knowing the best time to place for job adverts might be a factor that makes you as a successful recruiter.
The importance of timing job posts online cannot be overstated. Today’s candidates have more leverage in the hiring process because of the immense battle for talents in every industry. With this fact in mind, wise recruiters want to be the first to snap up available talent, ahead of their competitors. They realize that posting a job post on days with high traffic is important.
But do you really know the “right time” to grab the attention of job seekers?
When is the “Right Time”?
More than twelve years ago, I asked the same question. The only way to find the answer to that question was to reach out to representatives of these job portals. So I asked them if they could share the data with me, because I wanted like to know the best times and days for posting job advertisements in my region/city.
They told me that they were not going to share anything. They were always secretive about any data and unwilling to share anything, not even the number of visitors. I reached out to other job portals in other countries and the answer was always rejection. Nobody was willing to share anything, but I was still curious and I wanted to get the answer. I didn’t want to just guess the right time and date; I wanted to be sure that my work was effective and I was effectively using the company resources for advertisement.
So, because nobody was willing to share any data with me, I decided to build my own job portal. Just because I would like to know when the “perfect time” is for posting adverts on job portals.
Building my own portal also gave me the opportunity to learn how the design of the site affects candidate’s decisions, such as whether the bigger apply button works better than smaller one or if the location of the button plays some role in the decision. I was able to learn if people are applying more to advertising where the salary visible in the advertisement or if they are going to click more on advertisements where the salary is mentioned in the job title. Having my own portal also gave me the ability to do lots of A/B testing and see what things are more effective.
I have done many tests over these last twelve years, and in this article I would like to share with you the answer to: When is the “Right Time”?
In the statistics below I used the data from the last ten years (120 months) and these results show when hundreds thousands of candidates on the Czech market are checking the job adverts. I am convinced that these results are going to be applicable to other markets, but I did not collect data from other job portals in other countries, so I am unable to compare them.
The best days to post job openings
In the past, recruiters made job posts on Fridays, because newspaper readership and coverage peaked on weekends. But those days of classified sections are over. The internet has changed things for recruiters and candidates. When the recruitment and hiring process went online, it came with the sleek emergence of job boards, career pages, social media, and mobile recruitment apps dedicated 24/7 to job seekers and candidates.
Even now, there is automated recruitment software that allows ads to be posted on different job boards and social media in one quick click. But have you ever tried to test during what day your adverts are most effective? Most recruiters I know post the advert immediately when they received the request from the hiring manager.
Fridays don’t work anymore!
Why Monday?
We know that many people and Garfield hate Monday, but why is the busiest day of the week Monday?
A few years ago, I conducted several surveys based on that question. I found two answers: First, is that people see the amount of work that needs to be done during the week and they look for something else to do. Second is that they have to think about their careers during the weekend and they decide to do something about it or check if there is some other interesting opportunity.
I also believe that the main reason could be that Monday mornings are busiest because many recruiters refresh their ads on the job portal first thing when they arrive to work on Monday.
Which month are people visiting the ads the most?
We recruiters know that there are months when more candidates are looking for a job and that there are some months when they are not that active. Sometimes we even use that as an excuse that we don’t have any candidates. These spikes are affected by the summer holidays, Christmas time, economic situations, wage growth in population, and other things. For example, the January and February spikes are mostly connected with psychological reasons, such as New Year’s resolutions.
Which time is the best during the day?
All the data I have collected shows us that the best time is 11 am. It’s the time when people are going for a lunch with their colleagues and they don’t have time to start working on something new because their colleagues could stop by their desk any minute.
As you can see, over the years the activity has changed, but if we took all the data for all ten years, the busiest two days are Monday and Tuesday.
A fast, accessible, and timely experience is now the name of the recruitment game. This significant reversal from the “waiting until the weekend” mindset has changed the way people go job seeking. Now, candidates don’t just want to be treated well, they also want to be treated on time. Even with job seekers’ round-the-clock ability to access job boards throughout the week, Monday’s experience the highest traffic. Posting the jobs at the right time could give you an advantage over your competitors.
Still, variation in industry and niche may slightly affect the days and time of application and response traffic.
Conclusion
Advances in technology like Google Analytics have made it possible to track visitors in ways we wouldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago. Now recruiters can decipher the best time and place to post their job openings by monitoring traffic on their career sites. It is crucial that the data gained from tracking technology be used to both time job postings and to improve the recruitment marketing strategy.
No one usually thinks of recruiters as marketing agents for the companies in which they work. However, that is exactly what they are as they represent their companies to potential candidates. The job openings they post and the attention these ads garner says a lot about the image of their company. Timely, traffic- conscious job ads not only increase your candidate pool but heighten the candidate’s perception of your company’s brand and responsiveness.
It’s not just about posting the ad, but your brand must also be visible to the right audience. There are many other aspects that I have learned through these years. It was a time consuming, expensive, but interesting hobby. However, I am going to sell the job portal and invest the money into some other crazy ideas and tests. I still have many questions that need to be answered and nobody is giving me data.
You must continuously look for ways to improve hiring and good data analytics could be a key ingredient for an effective recruiting strategy. If you know when your target group is looking for a job, you can get better ROI from your investment, increase your pipeline and be more effective in the job you are doing.
Try to test what is working and if you would like to get maximum from your job postings, try to get information from the job portal that you are using. They know the best time to post the ad for your location and industry. And if you don’t get that data, try to experiment and start collecting data.
Rolling out an effective recruiting strategy is not something that happens overnight, and without the right data it is not going to happen.
Last Updated on June 1, 2017