That magical time between Thanksgiving and January 2nd is filled with family, friends, food, and cheer. It is also a time that the job search process can really slow down – which can be extremely frustrating if you are searching for your next career adventure. I wanted to share a few of the reasons for the slow down and to give you some ideas on how to stay productive with your search during this time.
There are many reasons why the hiring process slows down at the end of the year. One of the main reasons, especially for larger companies that have a structured process around adding and replacing employees, is budgeting. Most companies have an annual planning budget for employees that ends on December 31st. Thus, often the recruiting for new positions and replacement hiring starts on January 1.
Another reason for the slow down is that people are distracted during this time – managers are trying to finish up reports and projects that are due at the end of the year, there are lots of extra burdens on people’s time with holiday parties, shopping, gift wrapping, decorating, baking, and many people take vacations during this time of the year. Which makes sense that trying to schedule interviews and getting the decision makers together to move forward on hiring a candidate is extremely difficult.
However, there are many things that you can do during this slower time to get you ready to find your dream job in 2017. Here are my top three pieces of advice!
- Plan! Pour yourself a large glass of eggnog and work on your job search strategy. What do you want to do? What are those jobs called? What companies hire those types of people? Who do you know at those companies? Take this time to do the proper planning to ensure a successful job search.
- Network! There are lots of parties and events going on this time of year. This is a great opportunity to work on your networking skills. Print up some business cards that have a one-sentence description of your career objective and contact information, and get out there and meet people, and learn about what challenges they are having.
- Update! Bake some holiday cookies and give them to some trusted friends and family members and ask them to take a look at your resume to make sure that it looks focused, clean and clear. Also, do the same with your LinkedIn profile and in between bites of gingerbread they can endorse your skills that you are trying to highlight to future employers.
Advice from Amy Cell, President and Chief Matchmaker at Amy Cell, LLC. For more employment resources click here.
