Where to Advertise Faculty Jobs

Short answer: advertise in several places at once. Post on a general higher-education job board that e-mails your ad to matching job alerts, on your field's association job list, and on your own careers site with job data Google can read. Then spread the word through graduate programs, mailing lists and colleagues. For fall faculty searches, post in August or September, keep the ad up until the position is filled, and ask every applicant where they heard about it.

By the AcademicCareers.com editorial team · Updated October 14, 2026 · 11-minute read

The channels that reach faculty candidates

No single site reaches every candidate. Layer channels that reach different people: active job seekers, specialists in your field, people who already know you and people who are not looking yet.

• General higher-education job boards. AcademicCareers.com, HigherEdJobs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, HERC and AcademicJobs.com reach candidates across fields and career stages. The most useful do more than list the ad: they e-mail it to job seekers whose alerts match and pass it to Google's job search.
• Discipline association lists. Many fields have a list run by their professional association, such as the MLA Job List for languages and literature, the American Economic Association's JOE (Job Openings for Economists) and the American Psychological Association's PsycCareers. Specialists in the field check them, and each sets its own fees and schedule.
• Your careers site and applicant tracking system. This is where applications arrive and where people who already know you look. Every other channel should point back to it.
• Google's job search. Google shows openings from pages that carry structured job data, including your careers site and many job boards.
• LinkedIn. Posts shared by the department, the chair and committee members reach their professional networks, including people who are not searching. LinkedIn also sells paid job listings.
• Mailing lists and newsletters. Subfield societies, listservs and section newsletters reach specialists directly.
• Conferences. Annual meetings let you mention the opening in person, and in a few fields some first-round interviews still happen there.
• Graduate programs. A short personal e-mail to directors of graduate study and placement officers reaches new PhDs and postdocs while they are still deciding where to apply.
• Outreach to broader pools. Organizations, caucuses and networks that serve scholars your usual channels miss widen the pool. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission notes that recruiting mainly by word of mouth can violate the law if it effectively shuts out groups of candidates, so personal networks should add to public channels, not replace them.

How to choose: five questions

Ask the same five questions of every channel, paid or free.

1. Audience. Does it reach people in your field and at the right career stage? Look at the jobs listed there now: if departments like yours post there, candidates in your field are likely to see it.
2. Reach beyond the site. Does the ad go out by e-mail alert, appear in Google's job search or run on partner sites?
3. Duration. Will the ad still be up on your review date, and after it? A 60-day posting placed in mid-September expires in mid-November, often before the committee has finished reading.
4. Cost per 30 days. Divide the price by the months it runs. At October 2026 list prices, a single posting costs $173 to $218 per 30 days on the 60-day boards and about $98 on AcademicCareers.com, which runs for 90 days. See what it costs to post a faculty job.
5. Convenience. Can you paste the ad as it is, e-mail it to be posted for you, or import jobs automatically from your careers site? Staff time adds up when you run many searches.

Use the checklist below to plan your next search.

Channels compared

Most strong searches combine one or two paid boards, the discipline list and several free channels.

A sample plan with a timeline

Example State University, a fictional institution, is hiring a tenure-track assistant professor of psychology to start in August 2027, with review of applications beginning November 2, 2026.

1. Late August: launch. The ad goes up on the university's careers site, a general higher-education board with job alerts and APA PsycCareers, with the same text and salary range everywhere. For the text itself, see how to write a faculty job ad.
2. Weeks 1 and 2: direct outreach. The chair e-mails directors of graduate study at programs strong in the subfield. Committee members share the posting on LinkedIn and send it to two subfield mailing lists.
3. Weeks 2 to 6: broader pools. The committee sends the ad, with a short personal note, to caucuses and networks that reach candidates the department rarely hears from.
4. Mid-October: check the pool. The search coordinator counts applications by source. If the pool is thin or narrow, the committee adds a channel before the review date.
5. November 2: review begins. Every posting is still live, so late applicants can find the job.
6. November to April. First-round interviews run from November to January, campus visits from January to March, and the offer goes out between February and April.

A 90-day posting placed in late August runs past the review date. If you use a 60-day posting, set a reminder to renew it in late October.

Get your jobs into Google's job search

When someone searches Google for "assistant professor psychology jobs", Google can show a panel of openings drawn from pages that include JobPosting structured data: a short block of code that labels the title, description, date posted, employer and location. Salary, employment type and an expiry date are recommended too.

• Check your careers site. Ask your web team or applicant tracking system vendor whether job pages include the data, and test one with Google's Rich Results Test.
• Use a plain title. Google wants the job title only, without codes, dates or salaries, which is also what candidates type.
• Include the salary. The data can carry a salary range, provided by the employer rather than estimated.
• Take filled jobs down. Google requires expired jobs to be removed or given a past expiry date, and can take manual action against sites that leave them up.

Job boards that publish the same data, AcademicCareers.com among them, send your ad there too. Google does not guarantee that any page will be shown.

Faculty, staff and adjunct searches differ

• Full-time faculty. National searches on the academic calendar: post in August or September, use the discipline list and keep the ad up until the position is filled. Fall is the busy season: October brings about three times as many AcademicCareers.com postings as June.
• Staff and administrative positions. Posted whenever a vacancy opens and filled in weeks rather than months. Regional reach, general boards and LinkedIn matter more than discipline lists. Administrative positions are the largest category on AcademicCareers.com, with 287 live jobs in October 2026.
• Adjunct and part-time faculty. Mostly local, except for online courses. Keep a standing pool open all year, post 8 to 12 weeks before the term and state the pay per course. More than a third of the live jobs on AcademicCareers.com are part-time or adjunct, and adjunct terms appear in 232 job alerts. See how to recruit adjunct faculty fast.

Whatever the position, put the rank and the field in the job title. Of the 17,263 keyword job alerts on AcademicCareers.com, "assistant professor" (213) and "psychology" (158) are among the most common, and a plain title gives them something to match.

Track where your hires come from

Add a required question to the application form, "Where did you first hear about this position?", with a fixed list of choices that matches your channels plus "Other". Free-text answers are hard to count. Then record the source at every stage, not only for applicants.

Example: a fictional search draws 64 applications: 26 from a general job board, 18 from the association list, 9 from the careers site, 7 from colleagues' referrals and 4 from LinkedIn. Of the four campus finalists, two came from the association list, one from the job board and one from a referral. Counting applications alone would credit the job board; counting finalists shows that the association list and personal outreach did as much of the work.

After two or three searches, keep the channels that produce finalists and hires, drop those that produce neither, and work out the cost per qualified applicant for each paid channel. A separate application link for each channel, if your system allows it, makes the counts automatic.

What AcademicCareers.com offers

AcademicCareers.com has advertised faculty, staff and administrative positions for colleges and universities since 2000. A single posting costs $295 and stays up for 90 days. It is featured in search results, sent to job seekers whose job alerts match, and published with structured job data that Google's job search reads. Combined postings also appear on the partner sites UniversityJob.com and EngineeringUniversityJobs.com.

You can post the ad yourself or e-mail it to Info@AcademicCareersOnline.com and staff post it for you. Bundles of 3, 5, 10 or 15 postings save 15 to 30 percent, Unlimited Annual Plans cover every opening for one yearly price and import jobs automatically from your careers site, and advertising agencies receive agency rates.

Frequently asked questions

Where should we advertise a faculty position?

In several places at once: a general higher-education board with job alerts, the discipline's association list, your careers site and personal outreach. Each reaches people the others miss.

How long should a faculty job ad stay up?

Until the position is filled, and at least past the review date. Most faculty searches run from a posting in August or September to an offer between February and April.

How much does it cost to advertise a faculty job?

At October 2026 list prices, a single posting on the major higher-education boards costs $295 to $435, or about $98 to $218 per 30 days. Association lists set their own fees, and many other channels are free.

Do we have to include a salary range?

In many places, yes. As of October 2026, 14 states and the District of Columbia require pay ranges in job ads. Elsewhere a range still saves everyone time, because candidates for whom the pay does not work can decide early.

Is posting on our own website enough?

Rarely. Your careers site reaches people who already know your institution. Job boards and discipline lists reach candidates who have not yet thought of applying to you.

Should adjunct positions be advertised nationally?

Usually not, unless the course is online. In-person teaching draws candidates within commuting distance, so a general board with job alerts, a standing pool and local outreach work best.