It feels as if time has blurred during the pandemic. One day rolls into another as you’re working from home. It's Sunday and you're still working. Since you’re trying to stay safe, might as well keep busy and get ahead of your tasks for the upcoming week. Without realizing it, the summer is ending. We’re heading into fall. The weather changes, and so does the job market.
Once September starts, you revert right back to your childhood school days. The slight chill in the air makes you feel different. It wakes you up. You know there’s a change. It's the start of something new. There’s a collective sense that we have to shed our relaxed summer mood and get focused on our jobs and careers.
The job market works in cycles. During the Christmas, Hanukkah holiday season, hiring nearly comes to a halt as we’re focusing on family, friends and taking time to enjoy ourselves. Traditionally, the first few weeks of January ushers in the wave of hiring for the new year. There’s been a pent-up demand growing as people have been on vacations and not in the mood or mindset to search for a new job.
It's a similar experience in August and September. During August people squeeze in their vacations and take some time off to relax, decompress and get mentally prepared for returning to reality.
The summertime interview process is clunky and slow. There are lots of starts and stops due to vacation schedules. What usually happens is that a candidate is asked to interview, but the hiring manager is on vacation. When she returns, the human resources person is on the beach. When she returns, the job applicant is on his annual family trip to Disneyland.
Now that it is September, the wheels start turning again. The same way there was pent-up demand due to the holiday season, this occurs in September too. Managers anxiously call their human resource representatives and demand “where are all the candidates?!” Since there was little hiring during August, her staff needed to put in extra hours to compensate for the people who left the company for other opportunities elsewhere. The human resource person tries to explain that there is a war for talent happening and it's not easy to find people with relevant experience. Both the talent acquisition professional and hiring manager are frustrated...