Planning for 2026, we are exploring incorporating closing dates on our job advertisements. If your team has experience with this or has explored, I would greatly value your insight. What are your best practices for deciding to include a closing date, implementing, and communicating?

In my experience, closing dates work best when the hiring need is predictable. Set the date based on typical time-to-fill, include it clearly in the job posting, and communicate upfront whether applications after that date will be considered. Keeping the message consistent across the job ad and recruiter outreach helps avoid confusion for candidates

As a public sector agency, this is already included in our announcements as a requirement. It's posted at the top of each announcement so it's clear to the applicant. Whatever the deadline (specific date), or structure (continuous, open for a minimum of 5 days), it is at the top and will be updated if it changes. Dates can be extended if necessary.

We have recently incorporated due to Colorado requirements.

The only reasons I would advise to implement a closing date are
a) if you expect to be swamped with qualified applications and want to automatically stop the inflow (this, however, an also be done by simply removing the ad)
b) if you are not sure whether a job ad is the right channel, or whether the help of an external partner (executive search or agency) is needed.
We are currently using only the 2nd option, when we e.g. "test the water" for ca. 2 weeks via ad and active sourcing. In case these efforts do not reap the expected results, we then push it out to an external partner without having lost much time.
Hope this helped!
Laura

Curious as to why you are considering putting a closing date.
Some reasons to NOT have a closing date:
-req should stay open until you have a chosen candidate and a backup candidate, however long that takes unless there is a hard stop on when the position must be filled by.
-keeping it posted longer generates more candidates into your ATS for future pipelining
-having a closing date may create a "hire the best candidate we had apply", not necessarily the best candidate for the job

My recommendation is to keep it open, but after a defined timeline, the recruiter should work with the HM to provide info on what the candidate pool looks like and if needed, work with the HM to update the posting to focus on the must have and most desired skills and refresh the posting (required skill must stay the same as first posting or a new requisition/posting should be done). If the posting is a copy/paste of the job description with 30 bullet points, then recalibrate to the above (and next time take time to do a job POSTING which is a marketing tool, not post a job DESCRIPTION which is not.