Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership

With an abundance of candidates and little competition, the best actively recruit during December.

Corporate sales or marketing leaders will quickly tell you about the many advantages of taking action when the competition is low. But they would be puzzled to learn that the highest volume of recruiting usually occurs during January, June, and September, when the competition is intense.

It is clear that there is a pause or lull in recruiting that runs from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day every year. Unfortunately, only a few talent leaders know about this pause, and even fewer take advantage of the lower recruiting competition during this timeframe.

You can blame this unawareness on recruiting leaders. Few recruiting functions have taken the time to formally identify the calendar months when the recruiting competition is low and when it is intense. So, it doesn’t surprise me that many recruiting leaders are not taking advantage of this year’s December recruiting opportunity when the recruiting competition will be extremely low and there will be an abundance of candidates actively looking. 

What Is The Primary Cause Of This Recruiting Pause?

This pause in normal recruiting occurs primarily because most hiring managers are simply not available to conduct candidate interviews during December. Of course, they are somewhat unavailable because every manager needs to set aside time to complete their year-end responsibilities and reports.

However, the dominant reason why most hiring managers are not available for recruiting is that they have prioritized celebrating the holidays and taking some time off at the end of the year. So, this pause should be viewed as a powerful recruiting opportunity. It merely requires a company’s recruiting function to fully engage each of its hiring managers during December. If you do, you can hire higher quality candidates you wouldn’t be able to touch during most of the calendar year. 

Fortunately, There Will Be A Larger Influx Of Quality Candidates This Year

The main reasons why there will be a record number of available candidates this year include:

An increase in job searches among federal employees will increase the candidate pool – The upcoming threat of mass layoffs and agency elimination will cause a significant percentage of federal employees to begin exploring new nongovernmental job opportunities. And that exploration will lead to an influx of December applications from well-trained and experienced federal employees.

There will be a larger candidate pool because of “forced return to the office” policies (RTO) – With many companies (i.e., Amazon, Google, X, Citigroup, and IBM) now mandating that their employees physically return to the office, more remote employees will begin actively looking for new WFH jobs. It will be easier for these WFH employees to conduct an active job search with literally with no boss “looking over their shoulder.”

A continuing pattern of employee turnover will add to the volume of available candidates – Although the great resignation is finally over. A recent survey found that among US workers, “71% were open to new job opportunities.” So many of these wavering employees will use the year-end as a decision point to trigger their interest in seeking a new job.

More candidates will seek higher-paying jobs because their salaries have not kept up with inflation – After many months of waiting for a pay raise that never materialized. Many who have been struggling to make ends meet (including retirees) will take the year ending without a raise as a signal that they should at least test their value on the job market.

High levels of uncertainty will increase the number of people rethinking their careers – It’s hard to argue against the premise that this last year has been one of exceptionally high turmoil, trauma, and uncertainty. So, even more than normal, you can expect the best employees to use this end-of-year period as an opportunity to rethink what they are presently doing and plan for their future. This year, you can expect a higher volume of applications from those seeking a change with more stability. 

As diverse employees react to the downgrading of DEI, more will attempt to move to other companies – Diverse employees (and other employees as well) working for a corporation that has just recently downgraded their DEI program (e.g., Walmart, Ford, and Boeing) may use this end-of-the-year landmark as a trigger for beginning an external job search. Therefore, the number of diverse candidates available to you will increase.

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Why Your Recruiting Competition Will Be Especially Low This December

There are several reasons why you will face a lower level of recruiting competition during December 2024. They include:

Manager availability will limit most actual hiring during December – It was noted earlier that even those corporations that attempt to hire during the holidays won’t be able to make more than a token effort. Most of their hiring managers simply won’t be willing to take the time to scan through resumes or hold interviews.

Hiring freezes have entirely eliminated some recruiting competition – Many corporations have already instituted hiring freezes for the rest of this year to slow the growth and the expense of employee headcount. These freezes mean that you will literally face “no competition” from some of your largest recruiting competitors during this time period.

Exhausted headcount allocations also eliminate some recruiting competition – Because corporate headcount budgets have been relatively small throughout this year. An even higher percentage (than normal) of corporate headcount budgets have already been exhausted. So don’t expect any December recruiting competition from your normal talent competitors who have exhausted their headcount budgets. 

Exhausted job posting budgets mean your posts will be more easily seen – Most job posting budgets have also been exhausted toward the end of the year. So, with fewer competing job posts. You can spend less money on them and still be assured that your job posts won’t get lost in all of the typical job board clutter.

You will also face a reduced number of active recruiters – In order to save money, many organizations (e.g., Amazon, Meta, Apple, and X) have already significantly reduced their recruiting staff. If your company is able to hire during this time period. You will be pleased to learn that you will be competing against a much smaller group of corporate recruiters. 

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Implementation Tips For December Recruiting

If you’re serious about instituting a December recruiting effort. Here are some action steps that I recommend.

• Realize that you will need additional hiring if your international employees decide to leave – The real fear of being looked down upon and even the remote possibility of deportation may cause some of your international employees to at least consider quitting and returning to their home country. And if they do leave, that will create unexpected vacancies that your company will need to refill quickly.
• The key critical success factor is hiring manager buy-in – You can’t expect extraordinary results from December hiring unless your hiring managers are 100% engaged and available. So begin your manager engagement process by educating them on the many advantages they will receive if they allocate enough time to December recruiting. Each hiring manager can expect an increase in both candidate quality and new hire job performance. You should also provide an education packet that answers your manager’s questions about end-of-year hiring. Also, show them and your executives the overall ROI of a December recruiting program.
• Make sure you have the required headcount and recruiting resources – It’s important that throughout the year, you manage your own headcount and recruiting budgets. So that you will have sufficient resources remaining at the end of the year to fill your targeted positions.
• Focus your late December hiring on sales, retail, warehousing, and delivery jobs – After Christmas, there are always significant layoffs among seasonal employees in retail, warehouse, and delivery employees. Be prepared to immediately cherry-pick from those candidates. Also, realize that most bonused employees will begin looking after they have received their bonus in mid-December. Time your recruiting for these two classes of candidates accordingly. 
• Remember, not everyone celebrates Christmas – In the US, 15% of the citizens don’t celebrate Christmas. So it’s a mistake to assume that all job seekers will be so involved in holiday celebrations that they won’t apply for your open job.
• December hiring is only one component of “Right Time Recruiting” – It’s important to note this “December recruiting” approach that I am recommending. It is one element of the extremely powerful but seldom used “right time” recruiting strategy. This emphasizes hiring at any time during the year when your recruiting competition is especially low, and the number of quality applicants is high. You can learn more about this powerful but underappreciated “Strategic Right Time Recruiting” approach here.

Note: You can learn more details about implementation in my last article on December hiring here.

Final Thoughts

As the old saying goes, “Timing is everything in business.” So it concerns me when so few talent leaders have applied this “act when the competition is low” approach to their recruiting.

In the short term, I urge smart recruiting leaders to at least try an immediate pilot of this approach before this year ends. And then, over the next few months. Develop a process for identifying each of the key months when there is a good supply of available candidates and little recruiting competition in the job families that you target. In particular, leaders should examine their recruiting volume during the extremely high competition months of January/February, June, and September. As well as the low competition months of December and August.

Note for the reader

This is the latest post from Dr. John Sullivan, who was labeled “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company Magazine. You can subscribe to his weekly Talent Management articles here.