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Does it matter if applicants apply for jobs early?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

For most searches, does it matter how early an applicant applies? I’ve heard on an APA panel recently that one prof says it looks good to have things in early, whereas another on the panel says they can’t look at any applications until the deadline passes.

I suspect it depends on the institution, but it would be great to hear from readers who have served on search committees, as maybe some trends will arise in the comments.

Do any search committee members have any helpful insights to share?

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9 responses to “Does it matter if applicants apply for jobs early?”

  1. Nope

    Every search committee that I have been on, across different institutions and types of institutions, has not met to divide up files for initial review until after the deadline, so short of submitting an application past the deadline, in my experience it couldn’t possibly make a difference. As a committee member I have never even been told when people submitted their application (or if I did have access to this information nobody noted it or ever mentioned it.) If my experience is representative I cannot imagine this mattering.

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  2. Jeff Behrends

    I’ve chaired or served on a search committee for a postdoctoral fellowship every year for the past five or six years. Except when someone wishes to apply late or wishes to make their file complete after the deadline has passed, I have never known when someone submitted their application and I have never thought about it. It has never come up in discussion, and I would be stunned if anyone else serving on these committees ever gave it any thought. The report in the original post concerning the member of the APA panel is very surprising to me, and I suspect that it’s very much not common opinion that applying early “looks good.” (Of course, sometimes there are soft deadlines past which review begins prior to a hard deadline (if there is one). In that case I’m sure that submitting prior to the soft deadline is wise.)

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  3. Tenured now

    Search committee members are generally not supposed to look at materials until the deadline passes, but often they can and do. And if they do look early, then I suspect there is a very strong advantage to having folks look at your materials before they are overwhelmed by having looked at 300 other dossiers first. I was on a search committee last year, and I tried really, really hard to give the dossiers at the end equal consideration, but given how much I had on my plate I’m not honestly sure I succeeded.
    Remember that being on a search committee is a huge amount of work, and that it’s work that is done on top of rather than instead of the other research, teaching, and service work that faculty members are doing. As TT and especially tenured faculty members I know that we’re in a really privileged place relative to job seekers, and we as search committee members should be aiming to do well by all applicants – but for you as a job seeker, it’s probably prudentially worth bearing in mind that a) search committee members are only human and don’t always live up to their obligations, and b) some search committee members unfortunately probably don’t care that much about living up to those obligations.
    TL;DR: You as an applicant won’t know whether their university’s system allows them to look early, or whether they in fact will, but if you are able to, yeah, I would get things in early.

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  4. anon

    Aside from what the committee thinks of it, there’s also prudential reason to do it just because websites/portals/whatever can malfunction or be hard to interact with in various ways. Being earlier makes you better able to deal with those hiccups.

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  5. JDF

    We have no access to materials until after the deadline and no indication of when the person applied. I wouldn’t care even if I had early access or information.

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  6. RJ

    More of same experience. Does not matter at all in my experience on two hiring committees—not information I’ve had and wouldn’t be information I’d care about if I did have it.

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  7. anon hiring committee member

    We can look at applications before the deadline (I’m not sure if we are supposed to, but it’s easy to and people do it). I think most of us don’t do it because we’re too busy to do anything until prompted by a meeting (or if we are dividing apps up, no one bothers until they are divided up). But I have definitely looked at some of them early before. I would say it might, possibly result in someone spending a tiny bit longer with your application–but that obviously the tradeoff isn’t worth it if your application is going to be worse or it is going to create added stress for you, especially given that the balance of answers seems to suggest that it is relatively uncommon for people to look early.

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  8. The Real SLAC Prof

    Yeah, I have a bad habit of looking at applications as they come in (I don’t think it is a morally bad habit, and I’m puzzled by the suggestion that members of a hiring committee aren’t supposed to look at applications before the deadline). Being an early bird can help a little bit insofar as a committee member can become somewhat excited about a particular application in a way that gives it a bit of a bump due to spending more time with it and a halo of familiar goodness on the second, real, read through. However, I doubt it makes much of a difference.
    But, yes, please don’t be the person who sends in their materials after the portal stops accepting applications!

    Reply
  9. Nick Z

    If you’re applying to any community colleges, I would encourage you to apply earlier rather than later. When I was on the job market 8 years ago, I received a couple of interview offers before the application deadline had passed. My current employer definitely starts interviewing people before the application deadline specified in the ad.

    Reply

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