Is January a good time to search for a new job?

There’s a simple answer to this question: Yes

However, there’s also a longer answer which is: Yes, and so is February, March, April etc… through to (and including) December

Common belief is that the best time of year to be looking for a new job is after the New Year, when people have resolutions to uphold and the job market kicks off after a lull. ‘New Year, New Career’ is a corny cliché that will be trumpeted by recruiters up and down the land in January. I’d agree that this is definitely a good time to look, but in reality, with the exception of the week either side of Christmas, I don’t believe there’s ever really a bad time to be looking.

There will be some disciplines and industries that have well defined seasonal peaks and troughs, but if you work in a core business support or operational function such as Accounting, Marketing, HR, IT or suchlike, the majority of employers manage to keep you busy all year round, and therefore if you decide to find a new job elsewhere, to immigrate or retire, they’re going to need to replace you fairly quickly.

In a niche market, certain roles will from time to time have unpredictable surges of activity in the job market. For example, if just two or three Chief Legal Cashier vacancies arise in close proximity, this area will likely see a flurry of activity for a few months whilst people move around the industry leaving vacancies behind them. This could happen at any time during the year.

Generally, if you have reached the point where you feel you need to start looking for new opportunities, right then is your best time to start the search, regardless of what month we are in. Your ideal next job can arise at any given time, but if you’re not looking because you’re waiting for a perceived busy period, you might never even know about it.  Even better still is to establish contact with an experienced recruiter who knows your specialist area and who can help to identify your next step on the career ladder even before you've started to look.

Do you agree, or do your experiences suggest otherwise? Please share your comments below. 

Why selective recruiters can help you more than 'Yes-Men'

Although it's frustrating when a recruiter doesn't feel you have quite the right experience for a vacancy, you're in fact more likely to be successful in securing interviews through them than you are with a recruiter who is prepared to forward your CV to any opportunity you show an interest in.

I often hear of individuals being forwarded for vacancies when they clearly don't have the experience I know the employer requires. Most of these applications will be rejected at CV submission stage, but some will be invited through to a difficult interview which they have no real chance of progressing through. 

This is where the problem lies. The recruiter has got it wrong, and in the employers eyes this raises a doubt over the credibility of future recommendations by this recruiter, especially if it's not a one-off. Conversely those recruiters who consistently prove to understand the profile of individual required will develop a stronger relationship with their clients and their recommendations will carry more weight - to the point where the employer will trust the recruiters judgement rather than decide who to invite in purely based on CV's. 

A recruiter will generally have a much clearer picture of what their client is looking for than is evident in a job description or an online vacancy advert. They'll also know the availability of other interested applicants which will further help to profile who is likely to get an interview and who may not. 

Although it will be frustrating, if they're giving you open and honest feedback as to why they don't feel you would secure an interview, the chances are they'll continue to get more and more repeat business from their clients and will have something that is suitable for you further down the line, and when they do, you'll stand a very good chance of securing an interview through them.

When applying for vacancies - be specific

One of the most common complaints of jobseekers is that they don’t get feedback from job applications. Whilst for recruiters, one of their biggest complaints is the volume of irrelevant applications they receive from job adverts.

The two go hand in hand. The more applications recruiters have to sift through, the less time they can devote to replying to all the unsuccessful or irrelevant applicants. Meanwhile a jobseeker, disheartened by a lack of response, may step up the number of applications they send out, in the hope it will increase their chances of progression to interview.

The danger of deploying a scatter-gun approach to job applications is that it can undermine your prospect of securing the positions you’re actually most interested in. A recruiter, through memory or application tracking software, will generally be aware of multiple applications made by the same individual, and if these are for roles covering different responsibilities across a range of salaries there will, at best, be confusion over where your strengths lie, or at worst they’ll assume you consider yourself a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. Recruiters rarely get instructed to find these!

A better approach would be to only apply for those roles you’re most interested and suitable for based on the requirements detailed in the job advert. If you’re not then hearing back from the recruiter who is advertising these roles, give them a call to have a chat about your job search and see if they can assist.

CV's can't talk back - so why not discuss any question marks with the consultants who sent them?

When using recruiters, if you are prepared to instruct them to assist with a role and represent your firm to market, you should have faith in their ability to find suitable talent and to identify the closest match to your requirements, regardless of whether on a retained or contingency basis.

I’m not suggesting that recruiters never get it wrong (and why continue to use those who often do?), but the best hiring managers and HR Coordinators will take time to seek advice from them on why you should meet with those they’ve recommended, and to challenge any concerns they might have when reviewing a CV.

The best talent won’t necessarily have the best looking CV, so relying on the document alone is ignoring the experience and judgement of a recruiter who will have rejected countless of other applicants they’ve met in person, ahead of the shortlist they have ultimately sent through. If your faith in a recruiter’s recommendations results in interviewing irrelevant candidates, you will at least have identified that this is a recruiter you shouldn’t be working with in future.

The problem may be that too many recruiters have been instructed or that those who have are sending far too many CV’s, so some ruthless filtering has to be applied to narrow down the shortlist, but that’s a blog for another day.

I’ve recently been asked by a new client to assist with filling a vacancy that has already been on the market for a close to two months. My first thought has to be to consider whether this is going to be a wise investment of my time? If it’s taken so long already and nobody has been found, is there actually anybody out there who can do this job, or is the client being unrealistic in their expectations?

Having completed my due diligence with the HR Coordinator on the position, it was clearly a good opportunity, paying market rate salary and with reasonable expectations on the experience required. I asked why it had proved to be so difficult to fill, and was told the line manager had rejected CV’s due them lacking relevant industry experience, or for having too unstable a career history.

Perfect, I thought! I know an excellent candidate who has 6 years legal sector experience with the same firm who would love this job and would be able to hit the ground running. Unfortunately however, his CV was also rejected at introduction stage by the line manager. There was no discussion about the candidate before the rejection, and no opportunity to talk through the reasons why with the line manager whose decision wasn’t challenged by the HR Coordinator, just a straight ‘no’ based on the CV alone.

If I wanted to, I could pose several questions about an individual’s experience, ambitions and drive from reviewing a CV, but unfortunately paper doesn’t talk and without meeting or speaking to that individual those questions remain unanswered. I can make assumptions of course, but is this really a good way to judge someone’s worth? I think not. Had a recruiter who’d met the individual sent their CV to me, the very least I would do is speak to them to find out a little more.

It transpires that nearly every CV submitted had been rejected at introduction stage for a whole host of different reasons by the line manager who had no direct contact with recruiters and didn’t wish to hear explanations/responses to his concerns.

The consequence: a vacancy which takes months to fill despite high calibre talent being available and a series of recruiters feeling their time and effort has been wasted and would be better spent in future focussing on competitor businesses.

Please don't tolerate cowboy recruiters!

The recruitment industry is currently trying to raise its game internally through introducing qualifications to ensure higher standards of ethics, service and compliance. Positive steps, however I believe there is a lot that can be achieved externally with employers and jobseekers asking more from the recruitment consultants they are dealing with, and not accepting unethical behaviour.

Take for example a situation I’ve experienced this week:

Having been briefed on an opportunity by a client, I approached a candidate to discuss the position and subsequently gained her permission to submit an application. In the period between this conversation and submitting the CV, Consultant X, who had also been briefed on the role, sent her CV through without approaching her.

The client quickly responded to Consultant X with an interview request. On learning that the candidate had already discussed the role with another recruiter, Consultant X used the carrot of an already secured interview request to persuade the candidate to go along with his application.

On receiving the CV submission via Balance, the client advised they’d already received the CV and that they operate a ‘first past the post’ system widely adopted by employers and accepted by recruiters, but with the expectation that the consultant will have first discussed the vacancy with the jobseeker.

On this occasion, Consultant X had not qualified if the candidate would even be interested in the role. Nor could he have known if the candidate had already made an application. Then there is the more alarming issue of confidentiality. Would Consultant X want his CV freely sent around the recruitment market if he was looking for a new job? I very much doubt it.

In this scenario the client did exactly the right thing on subsequently learning of the timeline of events, and contacted Consultant X to reiterate their minimum expectations from recruitment suppliers. Consultant X had little option other than to stand aside and allow the representation to go via Balance.

To me this is not a victory however. The correct CV submission was ultimately accepted, but only after the employer, jobseeker and I had to waste time undoing the tangle of another recruiter’s poor standards. He ended up with egg on his face, but at the same time left us all with a fresh example of the recruitment industry housing cowboys who don’t follow the most basic of industry standards.

This situation will only ever cease to exist if both employers and jobseekers refuse to continue to work with recruiters who adopt these practises. Employers can enforce better standards from their suppliers by spelling out these minimum expectations prior to agreeing to work with them, and investigating any subsequent duplicate applications if they occur. It’s not always the fault of recruiters, as unfortunately some jobseekers will mistakenly believe that hedging their bets and knowingly instructing two recruiters to submit applications will increase their chances of interview, however if you do have a recruitment supplier sending you CVs without first speaking to candidates, please do yourselves, job seekers and the recruitment industry a favour by taking your business elsewhere.

A linkedin scare story not to be scared by....

Having only posted about linkedin yesterday, encouraging all to use the site, I thought I'd share my thoughts on an article I've just read which may cause some scare-stories regardless of the outcome of this tribunal.

(to read the article, please click on the title of this blog post)

It all seems extremely bizarre to me and if his claims are proven to be true I can only see this ending with the individual walking away with a hefty pay out!

The most important thing to note is that this is a first in the UK, and it wouldn't surprise me if it also turns out to be the last.

When I signed up to Linkedin the default settings stated that I am interested in being approached about 'career opportunities' (as well as various other reasons for which I'd be open to be contacted) and I've never seen any reason to change them. I'm sure the same applies to the vast majority of users on the site also.

I'm not in the least bit interested in new opportunities, but I've left the default settings as they are because, to be frank, I don't think anyone pays a blind bit of notice to them. Unticking the box certainly won't stop a headhunter from making a call.

The individual in this circumstance could just as easily have posted his actual CV on to a job board if he was genuinely looking for a move, and he'd have had every right to do so without having to fear for his job security...