The end of the year is traditionally the time you recognise what you’ve accomplished in the past year and plan where you’re heading for the next year and beyond. If you’re looking for a new job, whether it’s another role within your current industry or a new challenge altogether, the upcoming holidays are a great time to start your search and get applying. So, today we’d like to bust some of the myths you’ve been told about job hunting post Christmas and offer some holiday networking tips.
First up, some lies you may have heard:
“A companies budget for new hires is spent by the end of the year”
Many people believe that at the end of the year a companies budget to hire new talent is all dried up. But, most companies don’t work on a calendar year, instead they work on the standard New Zealand financial year, ending in March. Others started in July, or October…you get the picture. And even if they do work on a financial year they could review and find a surplus. Even if budget is slim, if they need someone to do what you do, it’s likely they’ll try to make it happen. No one wants a good hiring opportunity to slip them by!
“Businesses aren’t working between Christmas and the end of January.”
Almost every business has to keep running over this period. The “holiday period” is a great time for businesses and management to reassess their needs, and decide what the larger changes in the new year will be. This often means hiring new staff – that includes finding a superstar in {insert your job field here}!
“The holidays are when you should plan your search, and you should start talking to people in late January.”
The holidays are a great time for planning. But you should plan and search – the Christmas and New Year period is definitely more relaxed than the rest of the year – you can take advantage of the festive mood and start engaging with the companies you are interested in before things start getting crazy in the New Year. Besides, if other job seekers believe these same job-hunting myths then you’ll be at even more of an advantage with less competition.
“Maybe they have a job going…but everyone’s tied up with deadlines and family stuff.”
Deadlines and family obligations are much more in effect before Christmas, with parties, Christmas shopping and spending time with family more pressing then. After Christmas is a prime time to talk to companies, when work loads are decreased and “holiday mode” makes everyone more amenable to starting the year off right – by which we mean, hiring you – obviously.
Now that the you’re more convinced now is a great time to continue job-hunting and contacting potential employers, here are a few tips to help your search:
Use your Christmas Day party to network. Yes, with your family.
Your immediate family might know about your job hunt, but do your cousins? Aunts? Close family friends? They’ll all have as many contacts as strangers or business associates and chances are they’ll be even more willing to help you, as well as already being big fans of your talents. (Ok, ok, we know this won’t go for all of your family, like your crazy cousin Andrew maybe, but there’s probably quite a few of them willing and able to help.) If you’re still not convinced, it’s estimated that one of the highest company job placement techniques is via referral, and in a study by JobVite (US), job placements via referral came up as the top choice for best quality candidate placements.
And when you think you’ve networked enough… network some more.
The holiday’s are a great, relaxed time to have conversations with peers, mentors, friends and even strangers you meet at the pub about what kind of job you’re looking for and what skills you have. Think we’re being too pushy on the networking? Experts estimate around 75% of jobs are found as a result of it.
Use your social networks too.
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, use your downtime to make one. For a few hours of your time (at the most!) it’s a great way to show off your skills and past experience. And it will be one of the top results when a potential employer searches for you online. Why wouldn’t you want to give yourself such a great advantage for a minimal amount of effort? Once it’s up and running, you can start connecting to all those new people you might have met through networking. Check out how to ask for referrals on your social media pages such as LinkedIn on our blog here too.
Be proactive – have your CV ready and call your ideal companies.
This might seem obvious, but bear with us. A lot of people leave jobs before Christmas or in the early new year so there’s often a chance that jobs you want could be open and not yet advertised. Cold calling can be daunting but if it gets you in the door with a company you really want to work for, it’s got to be worth it!
If you apply for a job and get an “out-of-office”, then get in touch with the person again the afternoon of the day they’re back.
This gives them time to go through their emails, get a handle on their work load and by the afternoon they’ll be ready welcome an opportunity to chat to you about current or potential job openings, instead of staring at another spreadsheet with a post-holiday brain.
Remember to relax and let other people do the legwork for you.
Or rather, let us do the work for you. (What, you thought we’d make it all the way through without some shameless self-promotion? It is our blog after all…) You can set up alerts on Jobs.co.nz that will email you jobs in your chosen field. Click here to set up your own alerts.
So you can see why the holidays are a great time to go full-speed-ahead in your job search and get a jump on the competition. Good luck!
