Is there a best time of the year to be on the job hunt? Well, yes and no.
First of all, we should point out that anything we say as a response to this question is going to be a guideline rather than a hard rule. People are getting hired all year round, and vacancies can pop up out of the blue no matter what season it is.
Sometimes, an employee is let go suddenly. There are times where a valuable team member finds another job and quits with only two weeks of notice. There are other times when an employee has a family emergency or a medical issue that will prevent them from working for the foreseeable future. These things create vacancies, and they are hard to predict.
However, there are a lot of other factors that can be predicted with a fair level of confidence. The holidays happen every winter, and summer is the preferred season for vacationing. Retailers and manufacturers are likely to hit their busy season in the fall and early winter. Budgets are usually sorted at the beginning of the year. All the events described in this paragraph are regular and predictable, and they all have an impact on the hiring process. That means there are times of the year when hiring does move faster.
What are the best times of the year for job hunting?
This varies by industry, but generally, there are two times of the year when hiring seems to move the fastest.
The first is the beginning of the year – the second half of January most of February. The reason for this is that many companies plan their yearly budget at the beginning of the year, and that’s when departments are generally given the go-ahead to bring on new employees. They’ll usually want to fill these positions right away, as they’re oftentimes vacancies that managers have been champing at the bit to fill but were just waiting for approval from the company’s high-level decision-makers. Approval was probably pending based on budget.
Additionally, the holiday season is in the rearview mirror by this point. After New Year’s celebrations have been completed, people are re-adjusting to a more normal work schedule. While things probably slowed down while people were celebrating the holidays, the pace should be picking back up about this time. Any open positions that might have come up in November or December were probably left open in anticipation of the uptick in work pacing brought on by the new year.
Based on the previous paragraph, you can probably guess what the other good time for job hunting is – the early fall. Just like the holiday slowdown, a similar trend usually happens in the summer when people are vacationing. Oftentimes, employees (including hiring managers and anyone else involved in hiring decisions) will have long stretches of vacation time saved up specifically for relaxing at the cabin, hitting the beach, or visiting a foreign country. In those cases, hiring slows down once again in the summer, and that slack must be picked up in the fall.
Additionally, September, October, and November are typically busy months for most industries. If there are resources available for temp work, this is a good time to put those to use. You’ll probably see a lot more temporary positions opening up during September and October (and even late-August), and some of those positions will be temp-to-hire.
What are the worst times of the year for job hunting?
If you read through the best times of the year for job hunting, then you’ve probably already worked out the worst ones. Late in the holiday season (late-November and December) is a bad time, as temporary positions have been filled by this point, and many of those positions are coming to and end. The busy season is winding down, and people are thinking about spending time with their families rather than worrying about filling open positions.
Additionally, summertime can be pretty slow for a lot of organizations. Of course, we should point out that the summertime slowdown is nowhere near as extreme as the holiday lull. Many companies will begin their holiday hiring process as early as July. It’s just that the hiring process tends to be a lot slower during these months. If on average you would expect to hear back within a week or so, that might get dragged out to two or three weeks, as the people making these decisions might be out of the office for an extended vacation.
Does weather affect your job search?
This might seem like a weird question at first. Because the hiring process can take weeks, and weather can change by the hour, it seems like any correlation between the two would be coincidental.
That said, a University of Toronto study did find people who interviewed in the medical field on rainy days had a slightly lower rate of getting hired than those who interviewed on sunny days. The difference was only 1%, though, so it’s probably not worth rescheduling an interview over.
In fact, according to CareerBloom, there is a chance that rescheduling will actually impact your chances of being hired, but this depends on several factors, including the size of the company and the urgency of the position.
So yes, weather can possibly impact your job hunt, but not by enough that you should let it alter the course of the process. Your best job-seeking strategy is to make a plan and stick to it, rain or shine.
Conclusion
As we said in the beginning of this article, there’s no hard rule about when organizations will and won’t hire. However, we’ve outlined the general ebb and flow of the hiring seasons. If you’re making a strategic decision to leave your current job for greener pastures, you’ll want to keep this in mind.
Of course, if you don’t have a job and need one as soon as possible, there’s no reason to wait for summer to end. Just get out there, get your resume in order, and start the hunt. The process might take a little longer, but you don’t want to miss out on those unexpected potential opportunities because you delayed your job hunt.
Either way, good luck out there! And if you’re looking for work right now, especially in healthcare (and audiology specifically), reach out to Staffing Proxy today to see if we can help you out.
