Debunking the holiday hiring myth
A common misconception among hiring managers is the belief that it is better to hire people at the beginning of the year than it is at the end.
However, there are significant advantages to continue your hiring up to the end of the year.
“Since we ourselves plan to hire within the last quarter, we wanted to share our hiring knowledge with firms that may be intending to wait, and explain why this may prevent you from hiring the top talent needed to start the year,” said Simon Bromwell, Managing Director of Robert Walters.
1. Beat the competition
It is common that many companies hire less during the holiday season. However, if you have several positions to fill, hiring before the new year can have its advantages. For instance, at the end of the year there is a lack of competitive job offerings, allowing you to land the best candidates.
Since other companies will wait until the start of the new year, you can interview several candidates and take your time deciding who is the best fit for your business, without worrying if they will get stolen out from under you by another company.
Simon continues: “Hiring managers often think that people stop looking for new jobs at the end of the year, but this is not the case. Great candidates are often very active on the market so that they can start the new year at a new company.”
2. More time to onboard
For some organizations holiday season is particularly slow, which allows for more time to hire and effectively onboard new starters.
When the ramp up of business begins in the new year, your staff won’t find the new person a disturbance to their workflow with all their “how do you do…” questions.
Instead, hiring during the last quarter when business slows down can allow the new hires to get all their newbie questions out of the way and ready to jump in at the start of the new year, allowing the business to flow well during this busy time.
3. One step ahead
There is more staff turnover in January than any other month of the year, so it makes sense to be one step ahead of game by hiring early.
Since most companies tend to hire aggressively at the start of the new year, you can guarantee some of your employees will be leaving as well. Instead of feeling stressed by the lack of personnel to get the job done, hiring before the new year will guarantee that you will never be short handed, even during peak season.
By hiring prior to other companies, you will be prepared for the inevitable “quitting season” and business will not be disrupted.
“There is more staff turnover in January than any other month of the year, so it makes sense to be one step ahead of game by hiring early,” Simon continued.
4. Plan of attack
Having successfully trained new starters in the fourth quarter, they will be fully up and running by the start of the new year. This allows for an effective plan of attack since all employees will be fully capable of doing their part to meet quarter one goals.
Since the beginning of the year is a key to business development, having onboarding finished will help ensure each employee is able to focus on business success and measuring achievements.
5. Hiring budget
A common mistake hiring managers make is not using all of the hiring budget before the end of the year. By not using the entire hiring budget allotted for that year you risk getting your hiring budget reduced for the following year, and since those funds don’t tend to rollover into the first quarter, you can kiss your hiring budget goodbye.
Simon points out that “it’s well worth being creative with your hiring budget at the end of the year. If you can’t fill a long-open search by year end, is there another value adding a role that you were planning to hire next year that you could allocate to this year’s budget?”
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