Job seeking from a hunters perspective Blog

Holiday season is coming so no one is hiring I can relax November 17, 2009

This question was posed the other day in a LinkedIn group discussion.  The person asking thought because it is the end of the year and the holiday season is upon us that they could relax and stop their job search.

This is a huge mistake!

You have to remember that companies work on one of two fiscal years. Group one has their fiscal year from July to June. Group two has their fiscal year January to December.  I will talk about the January to December group since it is the holiday season.

These companies are in their 4th quarter. This means that managers are trying to spend all the monies that they saved until the end so that they can get the same monies for next year. It is also the time that they need to be thinking about next years budget. They have to look at business schedules, manpower studies, capital equipment and other things. They need to make a decision to hire someone now or at least have someone picked out for January.

So if you are in that category that think it is time to relax on your job search, please go ahead. This will give the rest of us who are putting the search in high gear a better chance of landing and getting off unemployment. I will keep my search in high gear until end of February. Then if I need to I  will kick it back up in April for the other fiscal year category.

When I talk about putting my search in high gear, I am not talking about searching the job boards or the aggregators like Indeed.com. I am talking about networking aggressively into my target companies. Research my target companies to find out how did they do in the 3rd quarter. What is the latest news on them. NOTE: this is information that you should have kept track of anyway.

And speaking of networking. This is the time to network even more. Find all the events that might help and attend them. Let friends and family know you are still searching. It could come up in discussion before, during or after Thanksgiving dinner. Christmas is coming and people get into the giving spirit. They are more willing to help others this time of year.  So do you still think this is the time to relax your job search?

Enjoy the holidays!