Seeing an online post last week, “Christmas doesn’t start until after Halloween” made me chuckle since many stores are starting to stock holiday decorations/lighting or they are certainly staged up for display immediately following Halloween
We unfailingly hear that companies/managers slow the interviewing/hiring process due to holiday vacations and parties and that it’s best for professionals to take the attitude of “The Dude” in the movie Big Lebowski, to chill until January. This notion annoys me as we need to stay focused as our clients are depending on us for results. Additionally what if a prospective candidate shuts down during the holidays and misses a great opportunity? To help my focus, I avoid listening to holiday music until the week before Christmas.
Is Holiday hiring slowdown real? I had to know, so I did couple of online searches finding many articles with no definitive answer/data. Checking the Bureau of Labor Statistics website only left me more confused, although one chart in 2018 showed no significant seasonality between quarters in terms of job gains/new hiring.
I dug up data in our energy search practice discarding the years of 2015 – 2016 since the industry in general was in a historical downturn and looked at more robust years of 2012-2014 and good, but muted years of 2017 & 2018.
Our data shows offer acceptances during Nov/Dec vs. monthly average of offers accepted was actually higher by roughly 50% higher vs. the rest of the year. The latest offer accepted was December 17th.
We’re not really sure why the holidays showed more hiring than the rest of the year, but our data shows that it pays to stay focused, active and optimistic during the holiday season. And I can take comfort that my aversion to becoming relaxed during the holidays is ok -I’m not a Scrooge and no Holiday Carols shall be played on my radio until it’s time.
