IRD and Applicant Review Process

Initial Review Date (IRD)

There is an initial review date (IRD) associated with each job posting that is important to note when considering applying for a position with UCSC. The IRD and a brief explanation of the application routing process is located in the “INITIAL REVIEW DATE (IRD)” section relatively close to the top of the job posting (see below).

The IRD is a “soft deadline” for submitting your application for consideration. ALL applications that are submitted by the IRD will be routed to the hiring unit for review within 2 business days of the IRD.

If you come across a job posting that has an IRD that’s already passed, there are a few things to consider.

• If you submit your application after the IRD, your materials may or may not be routed to the hiring unit. The unit will need to request more applications in order for those submitted after the IRD to be routed for consideration. This is a very common request by our hiring units, however, there are NO GUARANTEES that applications submitted after the IRD will be routed to the hiring unit.
• If there is a note in the IRD section indicating that the position is actively accepting or reviewing applications, that’s an indication that the hiring unit may be requesting more applications, so that’s a good sign that your application may be routed. That said, there are still no guarantees that your application will be routed.
• Our jobs are generally posted until the position is actually filled, meaning the selected candidate has been officially hired. Because of this process, there ARE jobs that are still posted, but that are not actively accepting more applications. If you see a job that has an IRD that is more than 4 months old, the job may be getting close to being closed, and you may want to reach out to hiring@ucsc.edu to see if the job is still active.
  • We do have a handful of “continuous recruitments” that are posted for up to a year in order to hire multiple people into the same role. You should be able to see that it’s “continuous” versus “standard” in the job posting - we route applications regularly for our continuous recruitments despite the expired IRD.
  • Note: some advertising platforms, such as Indeed or SantaCruzJobs.com, can list our jobs so that they look like they are “newly posted”, even if the job has been posted for a while. This is not something we can control, so we always recommend you view the job at our official jobs board to view the original posting date and the IRD so that you know how long the job has been posted. The longer the job has been posted, the less likely it is to be open.

Applicant Review Process

By now, you may have realized that our application review process is different from many other organizations and it can help to have some guidance (and patience). If you are new to the application process at UCSC, we encourage you to read through our Tips for Applicants or attend an Applicant Workshop. We also have a detailed How to Apply guide and FAQ’s to help you through the process for the first time.

If you are experiencing technical difficulties applying to a job, check out our Troubleshooting guide to utilize some of the tips or workarounds that have been successful in helping past applicants navigate the online portal.

Below are some guidelines around what to expect after you apply for the job:

1. When you apply: Congratulations - your application was received. You should have received an email confirmation after you applied, and this is the last email notification you will receive from the online portal for some time.
2. When the IRD passes: If you applied prior to the Initial Review Date (IRD), your status on the online portal will remain at “Application Received” until 1 - 2 days after the IRD, when your application is routed to the unit. If you applied after the IRD, your application may or may not be routed to the unit. You will not receive a notification that your application was routed - the only way to know is to check your status in the online portal. Once your application is routed, your status will change to “Routed for Further Consideration”.
   
   Once your application has been routed to the hiring unit, your status will remain the same in the online portal. We do not use the statuses in the online portal to move candidates through the process, so your status is not going to change until you have either accepted an offer or been disqualified. As you can imagine, either of these statuses will not happen until the very end of the screening process, once a selected candidate is identified.
3. The Internal Screening Process: Once the IRD has passed and the initial group of applications have been routed, the hiring unit will start their screening process. This process includes identifying how the job qualifications will be used in the screening process, identifying interview questions and assigning responsibilities to the hiring committee members. This can take a very long time for a variety of reasons, including the urgency of filling the role, staffing bandwidth, number of applicants, and the size of the hiring committee, to name a few. It can take anywhere from 1 - 10 weeks for applicants to receive communication regarding an interview. 
4. Selected for an interview: If the unit does want to invite you to interview, they will contact you directly via phone or email. From there on out, the unit will communicate with you directly about requests, action required and status of your candidacy. In general, anyone that is interviewed by the hiring committee should receive a phone call or email as soon as they have been selected or not selected to move forward. 
5. Not selected for an interview: You are not likely to receive any communication from the hiring unit or Staff Human Resources until a selected candidate has been identified, an offer is requested and the job is ready to close. This can take a really long time.
   
   If you do not receive a phone call or email after a few months, it could indicate that you were not selected for an interview, or there is possibly a delay due to changes to the scope of the job or within the unit. You are welcome to check in with Staff Human Resources if you’d like an update on your status, but please wait at least 6 weeks to call us, as we are not likely to have any information to share early on in the screening process. Just know that the unit will reach out to you if they are interested in speaking with you further. 
6. Communications and Final Status: All communications with viable candidates will come from the unit directly. This includes an email to all routed applicants that were not selected for an interview. The email confirming your disqualification is not generally sent until an informal offer is made to the selected candidate, so it can take a bit of time to hear about your disqualification. It’s up to the discretion of the hiring unit to decide if they’d like to provide follow up information to any applicants that are requesting more information about why they were not selected. Once the job is closed, Staff Human Resources should be able to share the specific qualifications that applicants did not meet as strongly as those selected for an interview. The status for all applicants that were not hired will update to “No Longer Under Consideration” once the job is closed and the hire is made.
   
   For applicants that applied after the IRD and were not routed to the hiring unit, you will receive an email from our online portal when the job is closed - this should indicate that the candidate pool was identified and your status will change to “No Longer Under Consideration”.