Reasons to Not Let Your Job Search Lag During the Holidays

While you really might feel like just lying around drinking eggnog on your holiday break, you shouldn’t take a complete vacation from your job-hunting strategy.  Why?  Because the New Year is right around the corner and with the New Year comes shiny new budgets for companies looking to hire.

As soon as a company’s fiscal budget gets approved, jobs get posted. So you need to be ready for a lot of new jobs hitting the market in January.

A couple things you can do between holiday parties:

• Get your resume in order
• Write a great cover letter (one that you can easily edit for different positions)
• /alumnus/create_account”>Update your online profile – the more info we can give to employers, the more job opportunities you’ll have
• Create an elevator pitch – this is a 30-second overview of who you are and what you want to do. Make it conversational so you don’t sound like you’re reciting a textbook.

A couple things you can do AT holiday parties:

• Elevate party small talk to networking – find out where people work, what they do, and how they got their jobs. You may meet someone who can get you an “in” at your dream company
• Tell people your elevator pitch – you never know who may be able to help you out by telling you about open positions or connecting you with a company VIP.

Then relax.  There’s a big year ahead and there’s a lot of positive energy about hiring in 2011 – especially for soon-to-be and recent college grads. A recent report of recruiting trends for 2011 looks for a 10% increase in hiring of candidates with Bachelor’s degrees, versus a 3% increase in hiring overall.

Employers with fresh 2011 budgets will have new jobs to fill, and they’ll be looking to fill them as quickly as possible.  Be ready for a New Year – your new job is right around the corner.

Tags: careers, december, holidays, job search, jobs

Category: Jobs