Often times job seekers think they looking for a job during the holiday season is a waste of time. That is actually not true. Take a look at the “5 Myths of Holiday Job Searching” written by Monster.
When people consider the “holiday job search” many will use “The Holiday” as a reason not to look for employment, for they believe no one gets hired during the holidays. I once heard it described as a scene out of Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” where a job seeker is trudging through the snow, pausing now and then to press his face to a window where he sees inside happily employed people celebrating their jobs. Sadly, he ends up a sidewalk vendor standing knee-deep in snow selling apples. It is my experience as an executive and consultant in the career marketing business for 25 years the image he might see would be job seekers celebrating the jobs they landed during the holidays!
I have found December was a very stressful month. Not because “nobody hires in December, but because there was a short window of opportunity and we needed to be prepared when it opened. One company executive from a prominent Boston financial firm said this: “If I want to get great talent I’ll wait till right after the holidays and entice them with signing on before the 1st when I can grandfather them in before the new budgets are enacted.” You see, while the job seeker is whining “where are all the jobs” the employer is whining “where are the good people” and when the two meet it’s a great chemistry.
It’s no exaggeration to say execs often make job offers during the holidays and come in to work on a non-holiday to do the paperwork so an employee could start January 2! Furthermore, since most job seekers do not believe they can succeed during the holidays there are much fewer people looking and consequently a higher percentage of job seekers find positions during that time than during other times of the year – it stands to reason. If someone advises you to take the month off, don’t listen. Let them take it off and there will be one less person competing.
Along with the misconception or fallacy that “nobody hires in December,” I’ve listed for you some other fallacies, which like myths are misleading if you take them for real. Consider the following:
Myth 1: Nobody hires in December...