To wait or to keep on looking?
It’s a debate that wages on since the dawn of time – okay that’s a bit dramatic; however it is a question that comes around annually. Bam, holiday season hits and we want the warm comforts of blankets, soups, hot chocolates and fests. The productivity level goes down a bit in just about every industry except for food service and retail – they love this time of the year.
But what if you are not into retail or you don’t want to work in food service, yet you are not 100% happy at your job? Should you stop looking now and wait until the new year or should you keep looking?
Let’s go over the facts.
Some companies slow their recruiting processes down during the holiday season. There are many reasons why this happens, first companies are always looking to show a profit and the biggest expense a company has is payroll so as companies are closing out the year, they want to cut costs if possible by waiting to make big investments until the new year. Another reason is, turns out Recruiters, HR and Hiring Managers are people too and they have lives – which means they take more time off during the holidays to spend with their own friends and family. So this means fewer decision makers in the office, which means non-critical decisions may take a little longer than usual.
The next fact is job seekers also tend to stop looking for work during the holiday season, so to some companies there isn’t much sense in investing time and resources in recruiting during the holiday season. I know for a fact that seasonal hiring increases during the 4th quarter but full-time payroll with benefits drastically decreases. Both sides (job seekers and employers) tend to wait until the beginning of the new year.
My advice.
Okay those were the facts and here’s my advice to you. I know I just gave you some business facts about holiday hiring (and here’s the big ole BUT) BUT there are some companies who see this as an opportunity. Since there are millions of job seekers and employers who “take the holidays off” that reduces a ton of undesirable candidates and competition automatically.
Every recruiter and hiring authority will tell you that 80% of the resumes they receive are from people who are not even remotely qualified. (if not more) So if those folks take the holidays off from job seeking it reduces the workload on the resume screeners.
I always talk about the enormous amount of competition out there in the job market. For every open position a recruiter gets 90 resumes, now just imagine what it’s like at a major company like Nike, Apple, Pixar, DreamWorks, Samsung, Uber (don’t laugh it’s one of the fastest growing companies around), Instagram and Twitter. So with all that competition, if you, as a job seeker continue to stay on the hunt then you have a better chance of finding those companies that are still looking regardless of the season.
Final thought, smart companies not only look but they make offers during the holidays with commencement dates for the new year. The reason this is so smart is because a company can secure a great hire for the new year beating, out all the competition who decided to chill, and the new candidate’s anticipation and excitement levels increase throughout the holiday season. They get to enjoy their friends and families while being all excited to know that the new year is already off to a great start.
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