Emailing HOD to enhance faculty application I am a postdoc in the process of applying for faculty position in universities. Most applications require you to apply all the materials on an online portal or careers page, which I do.

Now there must be hundreds or more applications. To stand out from the rest of the applicants and to bring to attention the application to the head of the department (HOD), would emailing the HOD enhance my application or would it affect it negatively. If it helps, what should the content of the email be?

I have seen a similar question on SE: emailing contacts after applying for faculty jobs, but my question deals with an unknown person at the university.
To stand out from the rest of the applicants and to bring to attention the application to the head of the department (HOD), would emailing the HOD enhance my application or would it affect it negatively.


Realistically, it does not affect your application at all. Firstly, this does not make you "stand out" nearly as much as you think it does, because quite a few people have the idea that writing some sort of personal letter to the head of the hiring committee improves their chances. Secondly, what do you expect will realistically happen? That the HoD thinks "gee, nxkryptor certainly shows initiative, better put them on the shortlist"? This is really not how academic hiring works.

The most realistic effect is that the HoD sees your email among the >100 mails of the day, exhales a short sigh, and then either directly moves it to "read" or writes you a polite "thanks for letting me know". 120 seconds later they have forgotten your name again, and it won't impact the evaluation of your package in any noticeable way.