When You Should Expect To Hear Back After Applying For A Job

Brian McCullough at ResumeWriting.com found that hiring managers are most likely to respond to applications three days after the opening was posted.

After that there is a gradual decline in replies over time — though there is a spike in replies around 1 week, 2 weeks, and 3 weeks after the job was posted.

Job seekers who haven't heard back at that point probably won't here back at all.

For his experiment, McCullough requested that his random sampling of 200 jobseekers record the next 10 job ads they apply to, the date the ad was originally posted and the date they received a "positive response." Of the 2,000 applications in the study, only 322 (16 percent) applications received positive responses.

McCullough speculated that the spikes fall on the week marks because it could have something "to do with the structure of the work week...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."

He wrote:

"...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 check for results right away.

"But even if they didn't have to pay for the ad (i.e., the job was posted on their own corporate web site, 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."

The numbers at the bottom of the chart below show the number of days that have passed since the job ad was posted: