Can I Job Hunt Over Christmas?
How To Job Hunt During Christmas Like A Pro
There can be a lot of confusion about how to job hunt over the holidays so I'm going to clarify that for you here and thereafter, let you not be confused about what you can and can't do when you should and should not message people over the December holidays into January.
Today, we're gonna talk about holiday do's and don'ts, and this is going to be a super good level setting exercise for you so that you can step away from a lot of the assumptions and the thoughts that are kind of spinning in your head.
I know that I can get into these little, um, thought, uh, bubbles at times and get separated from what is the situation that I'm dealing with. And for so many of us job hunting around the holidays, we have all these thoughts and ideas about how it's probably not convenient for example, to do this or that, or maybe I shouldn't do this or that and it's all generally incorrect being in business for decades.
The business world has its rhythms. We do respect them, but people are serious when it comes to business and so they are generally open for business most of the time, and they're able to receive and send messages and respond whether or not they respond to your message that will depend on different factors.
Whether you hear back or not from an application, depends on different factors today in this podcast, we're gonna talk about the etiquette around messaging for your job hunt. If you're going to apply online, you could do this at any time, and then at the convenience or whom of the company, if they're checking those resume deposits, they can do that anytime before or after the holiday, whenever they want to, from the convenience of their home, most likely when it comes to messaging.
However, we want to observe a few rules, but they're not that restrictive meaning from this podcast. I want you to understand that you have a lot of freedom to message and follow up and get in touch with people in your dream industries and get those interviews and networking meetings all set up and booked on your calendar as you go into the new year, so just let's just talk about the blackout dates for a moment.
Generally speaking, no one's going to be messaging on the 24th, which would be Christmas Eve or the 25th. Okay. People might still be in the office if the 24th is, a workday and you can send and receive messages then, but the chance of getting responses is relatively low, but possible generally Christmas day in the Western hemisphere in North America, no one is typically messaging then, and sometimes sending a message on that day can appear to be tone-deaf, meaning you're just kind of out of sync and people might not like that at all.
So let me just suggest that you know, if the 25th happens to fall on a weekday or an end don't message on the 25th, but everything else is fair game. For example, my children's sports activities, as busy as they are, these sports activities go down to zero on the 24th and 25th, but then they ramp back up on the 26th.
There's a blocked-out period where families and professionals do not send or receive messages or have any other kind of outside commitments typically because they're with their friends and family. 20 is out for December, and then I would say that the 1st of January is typically out as well.
Sometimes people like to send, you know, a holiday greeting on the fifth, the 1st of January, but, you know, there's no job hunt where if you send that one message that one day it's gonna make the difference in a job hunt.
So that's just not an issue, I would say give the 25th of December arrest, give the 1st of January arrest, and then everything else is fair game. Honestly, everything else is fair game, and for you right now in your job hunt, we really wanna focus on setting up interviews and conducting interviews. Anything else is just less important.
If you said, well, Stuart, what about applying to jobs? I would say, okay, applying to jobs for what purpose the purpose is to set up interviews. So if you're saying, "Hey, I'm the gonna apply?" I'll say great, but I will also challenge you to follow up with those applications and to also network in parallel. So if we're thinking about, "Hey, what am I supposed to do over the holiday as kind of a general question?" Well, in general, there are two things that you could do over the holiday.
One does absolutely no job hunting at all and takes that trip or takes that time off, just relax. You might have just gone through a horrific exam schedule and you need to catch up on a week's worth of sleep, but you also may want to sprinkle in some job hunting, some networking, anything like that, also an option.
Over the holiday, you know, give yourself breaks, recognize that most of your break and your productive insights will not come in the stress of the moment around your job hunt stressing does not equal progress. Okay? Taking breaks is super important, but this is also a fruitful time for getting interviews and offers. Some of my most memorable offers come around Christmas. I remember in one of my positions, I was hired as the head of international mainly over the Asia Pacific for a large securities firm in the financial industry.
My offer came on the 21st of December and my official start date was the 13th of January. So on and around Christmas people around this time, they want to get ready for the new year. They wanna finalize that new hire on their team. They want, if they don't have that hire, now they want to go out and file find that person.
So could you be that person that shows up on the radar, that person that shows the initiative to present themself as that solution that they're looking for around this time? Yes. you could be that person.
Let me encourage you to let go of any concerns you have around messaging around any hesitation around that in terms of the concept, may I, or may I not? You absolutely may know in terms of how to message and all the details around that, I certainly have opportunities to work with you on your messaging, your branding, your marketing materials, including the messages and the resume and, and just the whole thing.
The job hunt runs the gamut of the types of support you might seek and the types of solutions you might want. I would not say one size fits all, but some people like more implementation support and, and some less. I respect that.
I just want to encourage you to use this time if you want to use it to go out and get that job that you want or use this time to reach out to people, to find out what you want to do. People are gonna be at their desks or their work from home offices, they're gonna be there working before immediately before the holidays and immediately after generally businesses just take one day off if these holidays fall on a weekday.
Go out and get that job, go out and, and get 'em just go out and be successful and flourishing over this holiday.
At the same time, recognizing your, your need to take some rest, I'm certainly gonna be taking some rest. I'm gonna be taking my family on a short trip around the new year, and then back at my desk, able to of ambitious international students, as I love to do, I wish you a wonderful holiday.
Congratulations on getting to this point and drop some comments below, reach out to me by email or text me, let me know what kinds of content you would like to see on this channel because I curate this content based on what you are looking for based on the situations and experiences that you have. So have a wonderful holiday, and I look forward to seeing you again in the new year.
