does it really matter if you apply within the first hour of a job being posted?

A reader writes:

One piece of career advice I’m seeing here and there these days is all sorts of hacks for finding jobs that have been posted in the last hour or three hours or some other short timeframe so that you can be one of the very first to apply. Does this actually make a difference?

I get that it’s important to be early for a variety of reasons (e.g., to be in the first batch of applications they review or in case they get overwhelmed with applications and pull down the posting early). But I’m not understanding why applying in the first few hours would matter more than applying in the first 24-72 hours. When I’ve been a hiring manager, I’ve never once looked at what time someone applied, nor have I looked at any applications within hours of posting the job. So I’m wondering if a) there’s some truth to this advice, b) it’s industry-dependent (I’m applying for nonprofit jobs, by the way), or c) if this is wishful thinking/a load of crap.

There are some jobs that only look at the first batch of applicants that come in, but they’re very much the exception to the rule, and they tend not to be jobs most people would want: they’re jobs that treat hiring like an assembly line and have high turnover.

Most hiring managers look at applications either in batches or all at once at the end of the application period. They’re not waiting breathlessly by their application portal looking at candidates as they come in over the first hour or two after a job is posted. (Hell, many hiring managers don’t even know exactly when a job is posted, just that it will be “today” or “sometime this week”).

Moreover, anyone who has been hiring for a while knows that, to the extent that you can find patterns, the very earliest applications are rarely the strongest matches because they’re mostly people who are just applying to everything they see, and the strongest candidates tend to come later because they’re being more selective. (This is just a general pattern; obviously there are exceptions.)

Plus, there’s no way you can customize your application if you’re racing to get it in within an hour of the job posting.

It is true that there can be some advantage to applying earlier in the application period rather than later — but that means the first week or two versus five weeks later, not hours. The reason for that is that if the hiring manager looks at applications, say, weekly, then the strongest candidates in the first two weeks will become the ones to beat when they’re assessing applications that come in later. In other words, they can become tougher judges as they go. But again, that’s about weeks, not hours.

This is not a good hack. Apply as soon as you have time to apply to do it well, but don’t worry that you have to race to apply within hours of a post going up.

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