News

The weeks leading up to Christmas are often the busiest in my year.

Contrary to popular myth, recruitment doesn’t take a month’s break in December/January, and actually it can be a great time to hire and integrate someone into your business. You’ll still need that Marketing Director come January 1st. The Sales team is still woefully short of targeted head count. You don’t stop losing money just because of the Christmas break. Businesses know this – and the best recruiters take advantage. Right up to Christmas Eve.

Over the past couple of weeks, many candidates have been thinking that there is no point in searching for a new position now and that it would be best to hold off searching for something new until January or early February. They reckon that there is no point applying and that no one will be looking at their resumes anyway. Hiring managers and internal recruiters will be less interested in interviewing them, and they would much rather relax over the festive season like everyone else.

Likewise, agency recruiters stop submitting candidates with the same regularity as they also assume that hiring decisions will be put off until the New Year. The senior management are all away, so why bother?

Our experience has been entirely different as we choose to take an alternative view of the “holiday” season. Yes, there may not be quite as many new roles coming onto the market in this period, but there are plenty of open jobs. When our competitors start to hibernate, we keep working hard until Christmas Eve. Admittedly, the period from Christmas to New Year is very quiet. We are realistic about this, but final offers have still been made in this period, so we don’t switch off entirely.

There is less competition than usual for the roles as there are fewer active candidates in the market. The candidates that are seriously looking in the market have fewer recruiters who will actively work with them and therefore our candidate pool dramatically increases. In-house recruiters have more time to go into the detail of the roles that they are recruiting for, and we can spend more quality time assisting the candidates that are in the recruitment process.

Also, the quieter time is a good opportunity to on-board candidates before the inevitable push at the start of the New Year. They can get quality time with all sorts of people, and their induction will be far less stressful.

I am mainly writing this article for our candidates. Christmas truly is a festive season so take that opportunity to enjoy the down time and recharge the batteries but recognise that the job market is still deceptively very much alive (albeit quite lethargic) with less competition than at any other time in the calendar year. By definition, your chances of getting that elusive job are inherently higher…..

I take this opportunity to wish everyone the very best for the festive season and may 2015 bring you good fortune

Over a career spanning 20 years, Greg Tanna has established himself as an executive recruitment leader in the APAC Customer Contact/BPO/ICT/Consulting domain.