What Selling a House in December Has to Do With Getting Hired
ILENE REIN | Executive Recruiter & Job Search Strategist | Pounding Pavement 101
Every summer it’s the same thing. People decide the job market goes to sleep in June. So they ease off. They figure nobody’s hiring until the fall, they’ll enjoy the summer, and they’ll get serious again after Labor Day.
I want to talk you out of that.
Because the people who buy into the summer slowdown are handing a gift to the people who don’t.
Think about it like selling a house.
Everyone believes spring is the best time to sell. The listings flood in and the open houses are packed. You get strangers wandering through your kitchen on a Sunday afternoon.
Most of them are tire kickers. They’re curious about the neighborhood and killing an afternoon. They are not buying anything.
Now picture someone selling a house in December. Nobody sells a house in December for fun. That person needs to sell. And the person walking through it in the cold needs to buy. There’s no browsing in December. Both sides are serious.
The job market works the same way.
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The companies hiring during the summer are not browsing.
A company that posts a role in July isn’t doing it to pass the time. They have a need right now. Someone left and the work is piling up. A project got funded and there’s no one to run it. The job is real and the clock is running.
Compare that to the wave of postings that goes up in September when everyone decides it’s “hiring season.” Some of those are real. Plenty are companies testing the water or building a pipeline for later.
The summer posting is the December buyer. It means business.
You also have less competition than you’ll ever have.
Here’s the part the summer slowdown crowd never thinks about. When half the job seekers take the summer off, you’re not competing with them. The field clears out.
Then September comes and everyone floods back in at once. Now you’re one resume in a stack that tripled overnight. The same role that had a handful of serious applicants in July has a crowd around it by fall.
You can be early, while it’s quiet. Or you can be on time, with everybody else. Early wins.
What I saw from the inside.
As a Recruiter, I will tell you that the summer didn’t slow down the way people imagine. Roles still had to be filled before budgets reset. Managers were covering for people who were out, which made the empty seat hurt even more. And with a lighter calendar, a hiring manager actually had time to read a resume instead of skimming forty of them between back-to-back meetings.
Quiet on the outside. Busy where it counted.
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If you just graduated, coasting until September is the worst move you can make.
You worked hard. You earned the degree. And now you want a couple of months to breathe before the real world starts. I get it.
Here’s the problem. You are not the only one who just graduated. Every one of your classmates walked across that same stage, and right now they are your competition for the same entry level jobs. The ones who start looking in June are going after those roles while you’re still recovering from finals.
Wait until September and most of those jobs are already gone. The fall is when the rest of your graduating class wakes up and the competition gets brutal. The seat you wanted in July has fifty people fighting for it by then.
And companies know new grads are out here right now. When they post an entry level role in the summer, they’re looking for the person who can start from day one. The one who didn’t wait around. That’s the go getter they want, and that’s the person who gets hired.
I’ve watched new graduates land their first real job in four weeks over the summer while their classmates were still telling themselves they’d start in the fall.
If you’re a senior leader, the best seats are open right now.
It works the same way at the top, just with higher stakes.
There aren’t many senior roles to begin with. It is a pyramid, there are fewer jobs at the top. When a real leadership seat opens in the summer, it’s because a company has a genuine need and can’t afford to limp along without someone in it. A board wants change before the second half of the year. A key leader walked out and the team is adrift. Nobody opens a role like that on a whim, and nobody wants it sitting empty for three more months.
So while everyone else tells themselves the executive market is dead until fall, the serious openings are getting filled right now, quietly, by the leaders who stayed in motion.
If you wait, you come back in September and so does every other senior person who also waited. The market at your level is small and everyone can see it. When that crowd shows up at once, the leverage shifts to the company. Move now and you’re often the only serious candidate in the conversation.
The leaders who win these roles aren’t the most qualified ones sitting at home waiting for a better month. They’re the ones who picked up the phone in July.
I’ve had senior executives step into bigger roles in July and August because the right company needed them and wasn’t going to wait until September to make it happen.
Don’t hand September the head start.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll get serious after Labor Day, that’s months of real openings you’re choosing to skip. The companies hiring right now are the ones that actually need you.
If you want to know whether your search is set up to catch them, that’s what a Recruiter Review is for. I look at where you are from a Recruiter’s point of view and tell you what’s getting in your way. Then you go after the summer roles while everyone else is still at the beach.
Book one here. https://www.poundingpavement101.com/recruiter-review
About Ilene Rein
Ilene Rein is on a mission to get people hired... and in record time! As an Executive Recruiter and Managing Partner at Marketing & Sales Resources, and Founder and Job Search Strategist at Pounding Pavement 101, Ilene has spent years on the inside of the hiring process, watching what actually gets candidates noticed and job offers.
After hearing countless stories of job seekers struggling for 9-12 months with endless applications and radio silence, Ilene created Pounding Pavement 101 – her Job Search Acceleration Program that teaches job seekers exactly how to market themselves with laser precision using insider recruiting secrets.
The Pounding Pavement 101 program results are incredible: Ilene's clients are getting hired 6x FASTER than job searching alone – landing dream jobs in just 3-8 weeks instead of months of frustration and saving thousands of dollars of lost income! Check out the detailed statistics.
Ilene is a sought-after speaker partnering with companies, educational institutions and organizations worldwide to provide this premium job searching expert guidance.
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