I’m confused about job closing dates. I recently saw a listing online for a position that was posted on the company’s website in February and was said to be posted until mid-April. This is a private company, so not one that is regulated by federal guidelines dictating how long the job should remain up.
I was interested in the job so I decided to apply, but I wonder if it was a waste of time. Even though the listing is still up, how likely is it that they haven’t started interviewing candidates a month in? When companies post a closing date to the job, do they typically consider every application submitted up to the closing date? I understand it is the absolute deadline for applying, but does a job’a closing date typically indicate anything else to jobseekers (such as “this is the date you can expect to hear from us by if we’re interested” or “this is when interviews will begin”)?
It totally varies by company.
Some companies are pretty rigid about not starting to interview people until the deadline. Others look at applications as they come in and interview people on a rolling basis and will make a hire if they find the perfect person ahead of the deadline, or will at least be much more selective about who they interview as time goes on (if they know they already have a couple of candidates who are really strong).
It can also vary depending on the type of position. Entry-level, low-skill jobs are more likely to be filled quickly, while more senior, harder-to-fill jobs can take months and months.
But there’s absolutely no way to know the outside what this particular company is doing. Given that, you should apply if you’re interested, even if it’s very close to the deadline.
However, you should also factor in what I wrote above and apply pretty quickly when you have the chance to do that — because the opposite of this is people who take the deadlines too literally and assume they’ll definitely have the same chance if they apply the day before the deadline as they would have a month earlier … or who are shocked when a posting comes down earlier than the listed deadline.
If you’re thinking that seems unfair, an application deadline isn’t meant to communicate “you will have exactly the same shot as everyone else as long as you apply before this date.” Generally, it really just means “we don’t think we’ll want to keep reviewing applications after this date, although who knows, maybe we will, and maybe we’ll stop earlier.”