The exact best time to apply for a job is between 6am and 10am. During this time, you have an 13 per cent chance of getting an interview.

After that morning window, your interview odds start falling by 10 per cent every 30 minutes. If you’re late, you’re going to pay dearly.

There’s a brief reprieve during lunchtime, where your odds climb back up to 11 per cent at around 12:30pm but then start falling precipitously again.

The single-worst time to apply for a job is after work — if you apply at 7:30pm, you have less than a 3 per cent chance of getting an interview.

In fact, anything that came in after 4:00pm rarely ever leads to even a callback. At this point, it’s better to save your email until the next morning.

You’re also fighting another clock here: The number of days a job has been posted. If you submit a job application in the first 96 hours, you’re up to 8 times more likely to get an interview.

After that, every day you wait reduces your chances by 28 per cent. The longer you wait, the higher the risk that employers have already checked their inboxes and setup interviews with candidates that met their criteria.

Honestly, it’s almost not even worth applying after the job listing has been up for more than 10 days because from your employer’s perspective, they probably put up that listing because they needed someone ASAP.

There are already two big things that you can do to take back control in your job search:

1) Apply to jobs in the first 3-4 days of a job posting; and,
2) Apply to jobs before 10am (in the employer’s timezone).

In combination, just these two optimisations can technically increase your odds of getting a job by nearly 40 times.

(Text by Danielle Colley, bauersyndication.com.au / Additional reporting by Natalya Molok)