Here’s Why Tuesday Is the Best Day for Job-Seekers

If you’re looking for a new job, you might just find yourself saying, T.G.I.T — thank goodness it’s Tuesday. A new study of more than 270,000 job listings by the site SmartRecruiters.com finds that Tuesday is the most popular day of the week for companies to post jobs, and it’s also the day when companies extend the most job offers to prospective employees.

“Mondays are busy and tend to get away from people before they have a chance to extend offers,” says SmartRecruiters founder and CEO Jerome Ternynck. “By Tuesday things are back to normal and they can focus on extending job offers.” Tuesday also is the most popular day to apply for a job, which means you’ll have more competition, but it still pays to jump on a promising ad as soon as you see it, since almost 60% of applicants submit applications within the first week of a job being posted.

“As a job candidate, take the weekend to get your ducks in a row, update your resume, get your references lined up and watch the job boards for new postings during the beginning of the week, specifically on Tuesdays,” the company advises in a blog post about the findings on its site.

The most popular time of day for companies to post jobs is 11 a.m. “Most hiring managers and recruiters come in and need to take time to catch up or get their days started,” Ternynck says. “By 11 a.m., they’re caught up and can post jobs and they can still catch the group of candidates that might be searching during their lunch break.”

Ambitious candidates who want to get a jump on the competition should hit those job boards before lunch, though. The data shows that 2 p.m. is the most popular time of day for people to apply for jobs, leaving a three-hour window of opportunity for the people who want to get their foot (or resume, as the case may be) in the door first.

After Tuesday, the second-most-popular day for job offers is Thursday. Ternynck explains why this is the case, saying, “I find that employers are eager to make offers before the weekend starts and people are thinking more about weekend plans,” he says. Thursdays also give the job-seeker a weekend to think about the offer before accepting it.

Almost 60% of jobs are posted between Monday and Wednesday, SmartRecruiters finds. In particular, if you’re looking for an office job or corporate position, concentrate your job search to the workweek. “Corporate-type jobs are not as common and typically don’t have the success on weekends that they do earlier in the week,” Ternynck says. If you’re looking for an entry-level or hourly job, though, the weekend might hold some potential for you. “In my experience, the types of jobs being posted and applied for on the weekends are typically hourly positions and hospitality-type positions,” he says.