You just got the call to interview for a job—good for you! If this is a job you want, you’re probably feeling one of two things: 1) eager to schedule the interview in the first available slot, or 2) uncertain enough to push to the last available slot. But letting your feelings guide you here can lead you down an inopportune path because, yes, your candidacy can be impacted by the time and day you interview.

You can’t always control when your interview is scheduled. Sometimes the recruiter will tell you the date and time, but they will often throw out some options for you to choose. So with that in mind, consider these guidelines.

Don’t go first

Eager beavers, listen up! There are several reasons why you don’t want to interview first. If you interview first thing in the morning, your interviewer (or you!) could be groggy or late—just not bringing their A+ performance. But then you also have to be careful of contrast bias. When you go first, you set the bar, so the interviewer will subconsciously compare every other candidate to you. When you set the bar, you’ll never be able to impress the interviewers by exceeding it. But on the flip side, if you are confident you can set an unachievably high bar, contrast bias can work in your favor. Decide if this is a risk worth taking.

But don’t go last, either

You may not feel as prepared as you’d like to be, but putting off your interview until the last moment can hurt you, too. You don’t want to interview late in a day, when your interviewers will be worn out and possibly suffering from decision fatigue, in which the quality of decision-making tends to deteriorate as the day goes on. But, again, on the flip side, is the recency effect, which means because yours was the most recent interview, your interviewer is more likely to remember more about you and possibly favor you because you’re freshest in their mind. Who knows—after a week of interviews, your interviewer might just be excited to be seeing the very last candidate.

And then don’t go in the middle

Wait, what? Obviously if you’re not first or last, you’ll be somewhere in the middle of the pack. But you don’t want to be in the exact middle; ideally you’ll land somewhere just forward of the middle because, whether they’re aware of it or not, interviewers tend to give ratings that balance out over the length of the process. Say, if the interviewer rated a number of candidates strongly in the first half, they’ll try to balance that with lower marks for candidates in the second half. You want to be in the first half that is getting the good marks.

So when should you schedule your interview?

A good rule of thumb: you want to be just forward of the middle when it comes to day of the week and time of day. Remembering that most people dislike Mondays and are excited to be done on Fridays, and that Wednesday is the middle of the week, that leaves Tuesday! As for time of day, you want to aim for about 10 a.m., thinking that you don’t want to be the first interview of the day and you also don’t want to be the last interview right before lunch.

Now you know when to schedule your interview for maximum success, go out there, prepare, and shine!