Daily Archives: February 5, 2015

The Impact of Seasonality on Job Searching

Posted: February 5, 2015 at 6:00 pm

Share and Help your Friends With Their Job Search!

part time seasonal jobs and job openings

When is the best time to look for a job?

If you are working full time and want to change jobs, you need to juggle your spare time between your family, vacations and other activities. If your time is limited, it makes sense to look for a job when your search will be most productive.  A new white paper from MyJobHelper looks at the best seasons to begin your job search for part time or seasonal employment.

Seasonality Varies According to Industry

Teaching jobs

Let’s say you are a high school teacher and are looking for a full-time teaching job. You know he school year starts in August or September. But you also realize that schools can’t wait until the end of the summer to start looking for teachers. If educators take the summer off, they can’t start posting jobs in June or July either. That would leave school principals no time to interview applicants. Therefore most schools will want post listings by April and May. And just as you might expect, research indicates that April and May are indeed the peak months for posting job listings for teachers. The same research validates common sense solutions for other industries.

Non-profit jobs

The last four months of the year, especially November, are peak hiring periods for non-profit organizations. Why? Non-profits work on tight budgets that get revised at the end of each calendar year. When new positions are created they usually don’t start until January of the new fiscal year. Non-profits ramp up their recruiting as the year draws to a close. Therefore non-profit hiring peaks two months in advance of when new positions are filled. When is the worst month for non-profit hiring? According to this logic, we would expect the fewest non-profit hires to occur in January, and statistics do indeed bear this out.

Retail store jobs

Everyone knows that December is make or break for retail stores. Therefore retail job listings peak in November. The next two most active months are for job openings in stores are September and August. Why? Stores can wait until almost the last minute to hire personnel for the sales floor, but there are many other workers like merchandisers, stockroom clerks and inventory managers who must begin work several months in advance of the holiday selling season. A great way to figure out peak hiring season is to keep track of new jobs by using daily or weekly email alerts from MyJobHelper.com. It’s easy to sign up for alerts here. Check out the new jobs everyday and then enter the number of new jobs in a spreadsheet or simply track them in a notebook. You will easily be able to see whether hiring activity is increasing or decreasing for the job you are pursuing in the exact location where you live!

 

Adjusting the Search Process to Seasonal Opportunities

Once you have figured out the peak hiring season for your target job or company, you need to be prepared to take advantage of it. When there is less hiring activity you should cut back and be more selective in filling out applications and sending out emails. Take advantage of the extra time you have to catch up on these critical activities which are the key to a successful job search.

Setting career objectives

No one, absolutely no one, enjoys having to look for a new job. It’s natural to rush ahead in an effort to get the process over as soon as possible. However, you need to resist the temptation to look for old job at a different company without first asking yourself whether it’s time to adjust your career goals. The all-time classic guide to reexamining your job goals is Richard Nelson Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute?. This book is revised every year, so it’s easy to pick up an older edition for just a few dollars. The details may change, but the principles in the book that lead to success endure

Networking

Networking is something you should do all year round, but it can really pay big dividend when hiring slows down. As one job coach says, “It’s not about getting jobs; it’s about getting meetings.” And the key to getting more meetings is lining up informational interviews to gather information on the industry sector and on specific companies.

[pdf]http://myjobhelper.com/img/take-advantage-of-seasonality-to-power-your-job-search.pdf[/pdf]

 

Download the full whitepaper at MyJobHelpher.com!

About MyJobHelper

MyJobHelper.com is one of the fastest growing job sites in the world. Launched in 2013, MyJobHelper.com has attracted over 12,000,000 job seekers and tens of thousands of employers have been featured on our site.