It is mid-summer and this time of the year our executive search consultants are often battered with emails and phone calls on a daily basis asking why candidate flow is not booming. The scenario starts with a new order coming in on Monday and by Friday when all of our executive recruiting account managers do their status calls, the questions start arriving on why the client hasn’t seen 10+ resumes yet.
Summer recruiting is one of the most difficult times to get great candidate flow and it’s a national problem. By the end of May people have mentally checked out, all they can think about is traveling, boating, jumping in their RV’s, camping, the kids are out of school, family reunions and so on. Targeting content passive candidates results in not much progress and even the most unhappiest of currently employed active candidates do not want to risk losing their planned vacations to start a new position.
What does that leave you with? Targeting those that are unemployed, have a need and also have had the free time to get their vacations out of the way. If you’re starting a search between May and August and need someone to start ASAP your best chance is to find a highly qualified unemployed candidate, the second chance is hoping the search team comes across some candidates without many plans.
This same problem also plagues the resume writing industry which historically peaks at the end of March and demand falls quickly. With resume writing sales dropping off drastically until mid-August when sales will spike dramatically. But don’t get too excited, people are buying resumes at that time to get ready to make a move, they’re not ready to make a career change just yet and we won’t start seeing the unsolicited resume submittals increase until after Labor Day.
We make placements every month so it’s not to say you cannot make a hire in the summer, we just wanted to share some of our experiences and historical data about the cyclical nature of seasonal hiring. We always suggest to clients to start their searches before the end of winter or after school starts if they can plan it that way. Naturally, when someone leaves your company they’re not operating on your watch so you have no choice, but depending on the time of the year you now know what you’re up against.