Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2012, in the middle of Spain’s economic crisis; its comments on a “never-ending crisis” and on summer hiring reflect the job market of that time.
The best answer would be: when this never-ending economic crisis is over. Even so, there is work out there and you just have to look for it, even if the jobs available are hard, bad, uninteresting and poorly paid. It all depends on what’s in your CV and what you’re looking for.
As we’ve said many times, looking for a job is… a job. And like any job, it has its seasons. Now, in summer, with the heat and the pull of beach bars and the seaside, who feels like looking for a job that would take those pleasures away? Well, something similar happens to companies: depending on the time of year, the chances of finding job offers go up and down.
So when should I look for work?
Winter
Companies move in annual business cycles, opening their financial year in January and closing their accounts and profits in December. During the autumn they have drawn up the budget for the next financial year and set the goals to achieve over the following twelve months.
So in the first months of the year they will start looking for the candidates who will help them meet their annual goals. Suppose a company has decided to bring in measures to correct the workplace accidents it suffers, because it realises that sickness absence is one of its biggest expenses.
It will try to cut that cost by hiring an occupational health and safety specialist to look for solutions and put them into practice, in order to reduce that part of the wage bill.
Once the plan for its goals is in place, it will be in the first months of the year that it runs the selection process for this new employee, so that it can meet the target it has set.
This is just one example. The same thing will happen in every area where the company wants to grow in the following financial year.
Spring
This is a good time to think about the new talent coming out of the education system. University courses and vocational training programmes come to an end, and a huge number of students enter the job market with their highest hopes and their best training.
This is when two kinds of contract appear:
- Summer cover, for companies that fill in for employees on holiday by bringing in other workers.
- Talent searches for very common positions in the company, looking for the best options among the new students finishing their studies.
Summer
Once the summer cover has been arranged, it’s a very quiet time for companies. Holidays, and the fact that many companies close during the summer, mean that hiring drops considerably in the hot months and only the most urgent positions are filled.
In times like these, none at all.
Autumn
In autumn, two kinds of hiring remain, all of them linked to meeting the goals that have been set.
On the one hand, positions that couldn’t be filled in the first half of the year for various reasons; on the other, hiring to reach goals that still haven’t been met by the autumn and need an extra push to achieve.
Let’s not forget
Looking for a job is… a job, and every company has its own way of doing things. So once we’ve chosen the companies we want to work for, we need to find out what time of year they look for new staff, update our cover letter, strengthen our CV and practise for the different kinds of selection processes.
Featured image: AquariaNR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
