Is there a time after the job opening is posted when it’s better to respond? If you’re going to play the odds, what gives you a better chance for success?

I didn’t know the answer to this, even after almost 15 years helping job seekers. So, this summer, using data from both ResumeWriters.com and ResumeService.com (using real world job seekers and actual job applications) I set out to find out. It took me 6 months, but I finally gathered enough data to hazard a guess.

First, I’ll share the data. Then, below the fold, I’ll discuss my methodology. Finally, I’ll speculate on why the results are what they are.

Results- There Are 4 Distinct Times After The Job Is Posted That Are Best

It turns out that there are 4 distinct periods of 72 hours when job applications seem to get the best responses. They are:

• The 72 hours after the job is first posted.
• The 72 hour period that marks 1 week from the time the job was first posted.
• The 72 hour period that marks 2 weeks from the time the job was first posted.
• The 72 hour period that marks 3 weeks from the time the job was first posted.

The charts below will illustrate this.

Click for a full size image.

The numbers at the bottom of each chart show the number of days elapsed since the time the job ad was first posted.

So, in other words, in you want to play the odds, quite simply you should apply right away, or time your application to coincide with the 7th, 14th or 21st day after the job was first posted.

This seems like a funny coincidence right? Why would the odds of hearing back from your application line up so neatly with these 1 week periods? I explore that a bit in the conclusion section below.

But it certainly seems to be the case. If you look at the graph, of the 322 successful job applications I recorded, fully 74 percent came during one of the 72 hour periods mentioned above.

And as you can see, the times with with by far best odds of hearing back came in the first 72 hours or the 72 hour period around the 1 week mark. These surges in responses represented 56% of the successful applications.

Methodology

It was not easy to get this data. As I said, I approached ResumeService.com and ResumeWriters.com and asked if I could work with some of their job seeking clients. After of course ensuring anonymity, I asked each job seeker to do the following:

Make a note of the next 10 job ads your respond to. Note the date when the ad was originally posted. Now, if you get a response to your application, please make note of that. How many days after the job was first posted did you get a response?

In total, I got 200 job seekers to agree to do this for me. 200 job seekers x 10 applications each = 2000 total job applications. It took me 6 months to get 200 job seekers to agree to this.

What do I mean by “response to your application?” Well, I was quite specific. I told the job seekers to only consider a positive response to be:

A request for an interview, a scheduled interview, a discussion with an actual hiring manager or some direct, personal interaction with a real human being that you think is likely to lead to an interview. Please do not count automated replies or canned responses as positive responses.

Note that of the 2000 job applications recorded in this informal study, only 322 (16%) “positive responses” were recorded.

Click Picture For Full Size Image.

Conclusions

What can we gather from this? Again, why would the results line up so neatly like this?

Well, I have a few speculative thoughts.

First, I’m not surprised that you find more success the earlier your respond. It very much is the nature of getting there first or getting to the top of the pile. I think we all intuitively expect this.

Second, the 1, 2 and 3 week period results can probably be explained by the nature of how job ads are purchased and posted. Employers often pay for job ads that run for periods of weeks or, more usually, a month. I think it’s probably human nature for an employer to post an ad but not always check for results right away. I can see a hiring manager saying:

“Gee. It’s been a week since we posted that ad last Monday. Let’s check and see what we got.”

This might be because they paid for the ad to run for a specific time period and they want to check before they run out of time.

But even if they didn’t have to pay for the ad (i.e., the job was posted on their own corporate website, perhaps) I can see a hiring manager waiting a period of time for resumes to accumulate before checking for the results of a job ad.

If you imagine that a hiring manager checks every couple of hours for new resumes coming in, I think you’d deluding yourself.

So, this data suggests that a hiring manager is going to check for results a few days after posting, or after a reasonable period of time, like a week.

But what explains the slight bumps in successful responses at the 2 week and 3 week mark?

I’ve got a simple guess on that one as well.

Imagine that it’s a few weeks after the job has first been posted. The hiring manager now has a certain number of applicants he’s considered. In fact, he’s probably interviewed some of those candidates.

But what if he didn’t like anyone he interviewed? Then he’s likely to go back to the well and see what else has come in. In other words, he’s going back to the applicants again to see if there’s anyone better out there.

Why this would fall neatly on the week mark, again, I dunno. But I think it just has to do with the structure of the work week, the time period of the ad-buy, etc. It might just be human nature to remember you posted that ad two weeks ago Tuesday, and when this Tuesday rolls around, you’re reminded again.

So, there you go. If you want to play the odds, there are specific time periods after the job is posted that you might be more likely to get a response.

I should probably say something here about the data. I am not a statistician. The sample size was very small. These job applicants were from all sorts of backgrounds, in all sorts of industries with all sorts of qualifications. I did not control for any of that, so I don’t know if some people found success because they were better applicants than others or because their industries were hiring more than others.

In order words, this is very much anecdotal data. So take that with a grain of salt. But it’s the only time I’ve seen any sort of answer to this question, so I hope it’s helpful.

It seems that more and more job seekers are using Google Voice. And so, I thought I’d do a quick primer about how you too can use Google Voice, and how it might be the best new tool available to job seekers in many years.

First of all, if you’re not familiar with Google Voice, here are a couple of primers. Also, Lifehacker has a great rundown of the different features and tweaks here. 

Once you get it all set up, how can you use Google Voice for your job search? Here are some of my favorite ways:

1. Use it as your dedicated job search number. A lot of people are afraid to put their work or cell numbers on their resume for obvious reasons: you don’t want your current boss finding out you’re looking for a new job. Google voice allows you to set times calls can ring through to you, as well as numbers for calls to be routed to. You can thus screen and direct your calls like an air traffic controller, making sure that calls from potential employers only reach you at safe times for you to talk.
2. Set a specific job search voice message. As I detailed last post, if you make your google voice number your dedicated job search number, you can then customize the message on your voicemail greeting to specifically address potential employer calls. In a sense, you can make your voicemail be a supplementary resume!
3. Make sure you can always be reached. What if you don’t want an employer to reach your voicemail? What if you’re afraid of playing phone tag? If you want to make absolutely sure you speak to the employer as soon as he or she reaches out to you, Google Voice makes it easy route calls directly to you no matter where you are, at whatever number is handy. This way, you can be sure you’re always there to take that call when your dream job rings you back.
4. Make an out-of-town job search local! It’s very true that a lot of times employers would rather hire someone locally rather than out of town or out of state. Job seekers often complain that their resumes get ignored if they have an out of town address or area code. Well, Google Voice can help you solve the area code problem at least. If you know for sure the city you want to work in, get a Google Voice number with that city’s area code. You can have any calls forwarded to your current cell number and the caller won’t be any wiser since the number they dial seems local to them.
5. Privacy. Maybe you just don’t feel to comfortable sending your resume – and by extension, your phone number – out to hundreds of people. Google voice solves this problem by giving you a somewhat disposable number that still rings through to your personal, every day number!

What happened was, I had to call a client back to go over some final tweaks to their resume. The client wasn’t available, so I got his voicemail. To my surprise, the voicemail seemed to address me, and his job search, directly. I’ll paraphrase what it said (obviously changing some details for the sake of privacy):

Hello, this is John C. Doe, Project Engineer. I thank you for contacting me about a possible opening at your firm. I’m eager to speak with you and tell you more about my 20 plus years of project management experience. You’ve reached me at 555-555-5555, but you can also try my home number which is 555-555-5555. I look forward to speaking with you and learning more about your team.

Obviously, this message was more than the usual “I’m not here, leave a message” greeting most of us leave on our voicemails. When I finally got the client on the phone, I asked him why he had recorded a special voicemail just for his job search.

“I figure that’s the first real interaction I’d have with an employer,” he told me. “I wanted to make sure my first impression to the employer would be as professional as we’re making this resume. I’m sort of thinking of my voicemail greeting as a supplementary resume.”

Your Voicemail As Professional As Your Resume

This was so blatantly and obviously true, I’m embarrassed to say it had never occurred to me before. I spend all day every day helping tweak people’s resumes to make a solid, professional first impression. And yet, I had never thought to ALSO advise them to do the same with their voicemail. But think about it, that’s what you’re hoping your resume will do for you: get you that call back asking you to set up an interview. The voicemail message might very well be the first time you interact with your future employer directly. You should at least take some time to make sure the impression is a good one.

I’ve spoken before about how you want a professional email address on your resume, not something like sexxymamma51@aol.com that might be embarrassing. In the same way, you don’t want your voicemail to simply be “WAAAZZZUP!?”

Here are some tips for making sure your voicemail greeting complements and even supplements your resume:

• Record a new voicemail greeting. Do it in a quiet, calm place, so you can replace that garbled greeting you recorded at the Sprint store when you first picked up your phone. Use a headset if that makes the recording clearer.
• Make sure to include your full name in the greeting so the employer knows they’ve reached the person they intended.
• Make sure to repeat your phone number for the same reason.
• You could be like John Doe in the above example and record a special greeting that explicitly references your job search. If you do, keep it simple and maybe grab a tag line or two from your resume summary.
• Consider offering a secondary contact method like John did when he mentioned his home number. I’d even consider putting my email address in there.
• Be gracious, eager and thankful. Assure them that you’ll be in contact promptly, and then make sure you make good on that promise!

Wrong.

Hopefully the resume we’ve just written will be a solid foundation to use to apply to every job you see. But every job is different. And every job application might require you to tweak your resume to make the best submission.

One of the biggest mistakes I see jobseekers make is when they send the same one-size-fits-all resume to each and every job they apply to. This is no good.

Employers like to see you’ve done your homework. And they have taken pains to describe exactly the sort of candidate that they want for the position. If you don’t tailor your resume to at least make an attempt to match the sort of candidate they’re looking for, then at best you won’t qualify and at worst you look like you’re not paying attention.

This doesn’t mean that you have to rewrite your resume wholesale each time you send it in to a new position. A tweak here or there might be enough.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you’re an architect. You have a standard architecture resume that works for 9 out of 10 firms you apply to.

But one day you decide to apply to a firm that specializes in historic preservation architecture. This is a slightly different can of worms, right?

Well, luckily for you, you’ve done some historic preservation projects in the past. You have them hidden down in your career history because normally they’re not that important.

Not that important, that is, until now! Of course it behooves you to bring that historic preservation work front and center for this application. Maybe re-write your qualifications summary to reflect your preservation skills. Perhaps rewrite the description of the job that gave you the preservation experience so that you give more emphasis to your preservation bona fides. You might even rewrite your summary paragraph to talk about how you’re such a committed historic preservation architect.

The point here is that you should always be willing to tweak your resume to reflect the job you’re applying to. There is no one-size-fits-all for resumes, but if you have a solid foundation to build from, then hopefully you’ll be tweaking from a position of strength.

This would be the resume as one page:

And this would be the resume as a two-pager:

Page 2:

Don’t worry if your resume doesn’t look exactly like mine. No two resumes should look exactly the same. No two job seekers are exactly the same. But if you have the general format above, then you’re in good shape.

How do you format your resume if it goes to another page?

Simple. You put another header on the 2nd page. The header on your first page looked something like this:

It had your name and your contact info.

One option is to simply copy this header a 2nd time and include a “Page 2 of 2″ or “Page 3 of 3″ statement in the header.

What I prefer to do is something like: Name, Page 2 of 2, and some limited contact info. Something like the image below:

Now notice in this image that I have a section title that reads “Career History Continued.” This is because the career history got broken up when I went to the 2nd page. If you are able to go to a new page and start a completely new section of your resume on that new page, then you don’t need something like this. But if you had to interrupt any section during a page break, then make sure you label the continuation of that section on the new page.

It’s important that every page of your resume at least have your name on it. It just looks professional, and it helps the hiring manager keep track of things.

Nope. I haven’t forgotten anything. Some people seem to think there are some additional details to add to your resume. But I disagree.

Here are my big three no-nos:

1. Personal Information.

So, you volunteer at your son’s school? Great. You love playing volleyball? Fantastic. You’ve been married for 14 years? Congratulations.

But none of those things belong on a resume in my opinion. Again, a resume is a professional document. It’s not your Match.com dating profile. Sure, an employer might want to learn a bit more about you so they can get a fuller picture of who you are as a person. But they can get that info in the interview. Don’t waste valuable space on your resume talking about how you’re the president of the local gardening club.

Even if we’re talking about commendable volunteer activities that show you’re a good citizen!

I say, leave all the personal stuff out.

(Caveats… caveats… My one caveat here is if volunteering helps you flesh out an otherwise thin resume or helps fill in a gap in your work history. A recent grad might include their volunteer work to show they are engaged in their community and take the place of work experience they don’t yet have. Another example would be a stay at home mom or someone who was unemployed for a period of years. People like that probably should include volunteering and community work to show they remained active despite a lull in their career history.)

2. Salary History or Salary Requirements.

This is something else I would leave off the resume and save for the interview. If the employer specifically asks for a salary history, then go ahead and include it. But if it were me, I would hope they wouldn’t ask. And if they don’t ask, then leave it off entirely.

Why? Simple: you don’t know if your salary history or salary requirements will give them a good opportunity to screen you out… or worse, screen you in, but to your disadvantage!

Most open positions… they have a specific budget for the position. If you’re dumb enough to volunteer a lower salary… well then, congratulations, you’ve just given them a bargain and screwed yourself out of what you probably could have gotten paid.

Conversely, if you’re competing with 200 other applicants, a quick way for the employer to weed you out of consideration is if you show yourself to be too expensive.

The common rule of thumb is to avoid being the first one to suggest a salary at all costs. So why even bring up the salary right off the bat in your resume?

3. Lies.

Obviously, lying on your resume is not the best idea in the world. I don’t think you’ll be able to find anybody who will tell you that lying on your resume is a good thing to do. So, I’m not going to repeat the obvious.

What I am going to do is tell you why this is a bad idea. Based on my experience working with clients, there are two things that I have observed about resume falsehoods.

First, there’s a Murphy’s law in play here. Whatever you lie about always has a way of coming to the surface. You can be 99.9% honest on your resume… but fudge in just one little area. If you do, I promise you, that is the one little thing that will trip you up somewhere down the road.

I can think of a very specific example. This is only one example, I know, but this is the kind of thing that happens all the time. One of my writers had a client who was in web programming and development. This was a couple of years ago when AJAX first burst on the scene and was becoming the rage. The client was versed and skilled in an array of languages and programs… but not AJAX. Well, it seems that after we did the resume for the client, he kept hearing in interviews AJAX, AJAX, AJAX. As I said, it was all the rage. So he took it upon himself to add that to his list of skills. Just that one little word: AJAX. I guess he figured he could learn it later if it came up.Well, I heard later it went like this: he got hired at a non-tech firm to be their programming guru. Brought him in to take over the place and bring them into the 21st century. A great gig. But of course, everything they wanted to do (revamp their calender system, their internal messaging system, etc.) they wanted it to be full of AJAXy goodness. Long story short, the guy figured he couldn’t learn everything overnight, and he had to fess up that he didn’t know much about AJAX. He told the company they’d have to hire a second guy, an AJAX specialist, to come in and help him with the projects. Of course, the company lost a lot of trust in our AJAX-deficient friend, and it turned out that within a few months the second guy, the guy brought in to help with the AJAX, got promoted to project lead ahead of him. I heard all this because the guy was back needing a resume again six months later because he was out of a job.

And that leads me to my second observation about resume lies: they’re right there in black and white. You can’t talk your way out of them or deny them. It’s right there on paper. Our AJAX friend, for example, might have been able to plead confusion or misunderstanding if his thing had just come up in the interview or the conversation. But there was nothing he could say about the fact that right there, on his resume, he had knowingly claimed AJAX as one of his skill sets. He had represented that he could do a certain thing, solve a certain problem for the company. It was obviously a fabrication. And he couldn’t make it go away.

So in summation, the things I’ve learned about resume lies are: the lies have a funny way of surfacing when you least expect them to; and the lies can’t be erased: they’re right there in black and white.

One of the things that might be useful to some professionals would be a certifications section. Are there examples of special training, coursework or even seminars that you’ve participated in that might be important/prestigious enough to mention? If so, you can either add these to your education section, or you can create a separate Certifications or Training section.

Remember how I discussed a Skills section a few chapters ago? Another thing a lot of people like to do is put a skills section at the end of their resume. Here people might list general items that an employer might expect anyone to be familiar with, say, an ability to type or a familiarity with Microsoft Office software. This was more common 10-15 years ago when these technologies were still new to some workplaces.

I’m generally leery of a weak skills section included in a resume. If you feel it’s necessary to tell the employer how many words per minute you can type (for example) then you’d put that info here.

But here are some of the things people tend to include in a section like this, followed by my rationale for leaving this stuff out:

1. Your word-per-minute typing prowess; typing skills.
   You can type? Congratulations on making it to the 20th century. In the 21st century workforce, it’s assumed you can type well and at a reasonable pace. This is a bare minimum job requirement.
2. Ability to work with PCs.
   Again, the fact that you are familiar with a work-tool that 97% of the world’s business is done on is not going to make you stand out. You might as well also list the fact that you breathe oxygen as a “skill.”
3. Experience with Word, Excel, Outlook or any other Microsoft Office programs.
   I wish it were otherwise, but the western business world is tied to the Microsoft Office ecosystem. If you don’t yet know how to create formulas in Excel or presentations with graphics in PowerPoint, then it might be time for some crash courses.
4. Experience with non-Office programs.
   Similar to the point made above. No matter how superior the alternative programs might be, chances are you’ll be working in an MS Office environment, so your skills with WordPerfect are probably superfluous. I would make an exception here if you know the employer uses an obscure, niche or industry-specific software program or suite of tools. In that case, alerting them might be to your advantage.
5. HTML.
   If you want to give people the impression you have some coding skill, choose something a little more practical (PHP?) or cutting edge (Rails?). My mom can do rudimentary HTML with her personal web page and photo albums. Pointing out knowledge of HTML isn’t guaranteed to impress an employer.
6. Faxing/Copying skills.
   Again, gee, I hope you know how to do this… along with sending email, managing voicemail, texting on your cell phone, etc.

Another option is to create a completely separate references page in addition to your resume. If you go this route and make a references sheet, who should you use for your references?

1. Someone the hiring manager knows.
   Like anything else in job search, the most effective connections are personal connections. Getting someone the hiring manager knows to vouch for you can do all the vetting necessary.
2. Someone the hiring manager respects.
   Another good tactic is to get a reference from someone in the industry the hiring manager might respect or even idolize. If you’re interviewing for a fund management position and you can get a reference from Warren Buffett, you’re likely to be hired just so the manager can bask in the glow of the Oracle.
3. Your current boss.
   Here’s a really effective reference that you might not always be able to get. If you can get your current or most recent boss to say something like, “Gee, we really hate to see him go, but if we have to lose him, here’s why he’s such a great guy…” that can do wonders.
4. Someone in the industry. Even a competitor.
   References are meant to do two things: find out if you’re a serial killer; and find out if you can do your job competently. If you have enough of a reputation in the industry to get a recommendation from someone who works in the same field you do, then you’ve gone a long way to answering the second question.
5. Any previous boss.
   Try to pick the boss that is most likely to sing the praises of your competency and effectiveness. Again, this is just to reassure the hiring manager that you know what you are doing.
6. Someone “respectable” in society.
   If you’ve got none of the above, your last option is someone who could reasonably be expected to be an upstanding member of society. I’m talking about a teacher, professor, minister, doctor, lawyer, etc. This is likely to be a family friend, but pick the friend who is most likely to be widely known in the community.

For most people, the section that comes after the career history is the education section.

But notice, I said most people. If you’re someone with 2 or more years of experience in a professional job (i.e., not a part-time student summer job) then most likely your education section comes near the end of your resume.

Why is this? Because most employers are in a what-have-you-done-lately frame of mind. They want to see that you’ve done in the real world. They want to see that you’ve gotten results. That’s why most resumes give more emphasis to the career history. Don’t get me wrong… employers want to know that you have gotten an education. They want to see this info somewhere. A degree also helps. But it’s the career history that that is more important to them than anything. So, you emphasize that.

Now, for the caveats…

Yes, again with the caveats. There are certain cases when you might put your education section near the top of your resume. Is your specific degree important to the job? Then maybe give it more emphasis. A doctor or a college professor might want to put that degree and the (hopefully prestigious) name of the college front and center. Also, if the degree is key to the position you’re applying for, then put that near the top to show you’re qualified. For example, if you were applying to be a special education teacher, then you might want to front load your Special Ed. certification instead of leaving it for the end.

And then there are the students. I’m talking about teenagers, college grads, or really anyone who only has a limited amount of real world work experience. For anyone in this category, you definitely put the education section before your career history.

Why? Because your schooling is the most impressive thing you’ve done thus far. Your career, such as it is, isn’t that interesting yet. If all you’ve got to show in terms of a career history are a series of part-time summer jobs, then de-emphasize those, and instead, highlight that new Bachelors Degree you got that all those summer jobs helped to pay for.

So in conclusion:

• Most people put their education section after their career history, usually near the end of the resume.
• Specialized degree holders (lawyers, doctors, professors and the like) might put education before the career history.
• Students, recent grads and anyone with a skimpy career history definitely should put the education section before the career history, near the top of the resume.

I like to do this using a mixture of normal paragraphs and bulleted lists.

Use a paragraph to describe what you did at the job. I’m talking here about describing your duties, general scope of work, who you reported to, who reported to you, etc. Generally, in simple paragraph form, take 2-3 or even 7 sentences to give us the over-all job description.

Below that, in bulleted list format, give us 2-3, or even 5-6 key points or accomplishments from that job.

I love this split paragraph/bullet list format because it organizes things for the eye, and it makes your accomplishments stand out. If you just write the whole thing as one big paragraph with your duties mixed in with your accomplishments, then nothing stands out. By the same token, a lot of people just make everything a bullet item in a list. But if everything is a bulleted list, then nothing stands out that way either!

Divide things up using the paragraph to describe the job, and using the bullets to highlight key points or accomplishments. This makes for a logical, efficient organization of the information.

So, start writing a paragraph that describes what you did for each job. Under that paragraph, add a few bulleted items to highlight what you achieved.

A rule of thumb in resume writing is to “show, don’t tell!” Telling me what you did at each job is not as impressive as showing me what you were able to accomplish. Remember, in this reverse chronology of your career history, hopefully each successive job will show you taking on more responsibilities and getting bigger, better results. In other words, you should be describing the growth trajectory of your career.

Again, let the text be normal size (11-12pt. font) with no bolding or underlining.

It’s ok to be dry with the job descriptions. They’re just the facts, ma’am. But be sure to include things that make you look like you’ve got plenty of impressive responsibilities. Include just duties you have that, while boring and mundane, combine to show you do a heck of a lot at your job. You want to seem like you can handle anything.

And as for the bulleted accomplishments, tangible numbers are great. Saying you won this award or managed this number of people is fine. But including real numbers, like x number dollars in sales, or x% increase, or x type of improvement… that’s the best. And this holds true for all professionals, not just people in sales. If you can show you achieved things, and you can put a solid, tangible descriptor on that achievement, then you’re more likely to impress the hiring manager.

Your first few jobs might look something like this:

A word here about word tense. Let’s keep it simple: if you’re currently employed at a job, then use the present tense: “Manage a sales territory encompassing…” But if the job is in the past, then use the past tense: “Managed a sales territory encompassing…”

So if you are currently employed, then ONLY that job description should be in the present tense. If the job was in the past, then use the past tense. And you’ll notice this holds true for the bulleted accomplishments at well. If it was an accomplishment, then it happened in the past. Use the past tense.