Saccadic selectivity refers to the systematic selection of some visual locations rather than others due to one of three sources: stimulus-driven processes, soft constraints operating through acquired expected utilities, or deliberately adopted goal-driven strategies. In previous research, we manipulated the global configuration of a visual display to study its influence on the initial fixation in a search task. We also manipulated cognitive load. Across three experiments we found a systematic influence of global configuration on saccadic selectivity. In the second experiment we found that performing a secondary task increases the influence of our global configuration on saccadic selectivity. Experiment 3 pushed our paradigm to its limit to reveal intriguing data regarding the time course of the tradeoff between stimulus--driven processes and soft constraints.