Career Warrior Podcast #316) Pros & Cons of Applying Now [Holidays 2023]

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00

I know that logistically, the holidays can be a challenging time, the job search, if you want to throw that thing in there, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do that if I’m not that excited about my job search there.

And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast, where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life.

Today, I’m going to guide you through the current job search landscape and list some of the pros and cons of applying now we are in November 2023, headed into December. I’m here to bring some data about the current job search landscape, and give you some personal insights on what typically goes on around the holidays.

But first, some breaking news, US News and World Report just released a list of top resume services. And I was so delighted that Let’s Eat, Grandma made that list. I usually am not in the know, I kind of just wake up and I just see a link and we’re on it. This was nothing that we paid US News and World Report for but this is something just I’m really delighted about. So we are here for jobseekers, to give them the best leg up and to make their resume really stand out in this current job market. So if you are in the market, and looking for a brand new resume, feel free to head on over to letseatgrandma.com and we will hook you up. Promise!

Alright, so what’s going on with the current job search landscape? Well, the BLS just released the recent October report and it’s not looking as good as we thought. Job openings did not meet expectations, indicating a tighter labor market is continuing on into Q4, we saw that US employers added 150,000 jobs in October, one under 250K, which sounds like a lot. But when you compare that to September in which we saw 297,000 jobs, it’s just not as exciting as we thought. So this does indicate that the labor market is cooling off. Although I don’t want you to feel like this is a doom and gloom podcast. I’m just reporting the data here. But Julia Pollak, Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter, did report that there was a 260,000 year to date average of jobs being added. And so when you compare that 150k, compared to the 260k average, didn’t look so hot.

However, there were some industry leaders, some really big additions to jobs that we saw in health care, in which there was 58,000 new jobs being added, followed by government, which was 51,000 construction, which is a good health marker, I think for the overall economy 23,000 jobs being added. And for my fellow professional and business services people I know a lot of our clients here are within that realm, we saw 15,000 job additions there. So not bad in terms of I think some of these big industries here. But when you compare the data, I think to 2021, in which there was just hiring going left and right, I mean, I think this kind of just paints a picture here. So what does this mean the whole job market “cooling off” and we see things like wage growth slowing down and things like that?

Well, in 2023, things have been really competitive for job seekers, you know. People are maybe not hiring as aggressively as they once were but people are still absolutely hiring and it becomes more important now than ever to have just kind of like a standout job application. So if you go forward with a think some intention, and knowing what you want, now is still a perfectly good time to move forward in your job search.

So let’s talk about applying during the holidays. Most folks when they hear the word “job search” and also the word “holidays” that typically doesn’t go together. We think that no holidays are associated, I think with just spending time with family, turkey, gifts or whatever. But the job search is a perfectly good time to apply for jobs. But I do want to objectively kind of discussed the pros and cons of applying during this time, especially as we’ve seen this tight labor market in 2023.

So the cons, the first being you may not get as many responses as compared to applying a January responses to resume job applications. And by response, I mean interview requests and just job offers. In general things don’t move as quickly, obviously as January. When you look at the data: we saw that this past year, there were 472,000 non-farm jobs being added in January compared to December of last year in which there were 223,000. So pretty significant spike in terms of activity when it comes to employers hiring people just in general and then In February, we still saw a pretty high 326,000. But things went back down in March, things were not just picking up high in the 472, you know, 300,000, even things went down. And for me that says that there’s a very short window of time, in which we can kind of like ride this wave of employers, you know, hiring people with new budgets in the year, the excitement and things like that, it’s not as great as you would think it is, at least it didn’t appear this year.

The second con for applying during the holidays is just in general, it takes some time to apply for jobs, as we know, it takes the time and energy and gusto and so much of that I think, is tough when we have to focus on family and gifts and time off. And I know that logistically, the holidays can be a challenging time. So the job search, if you want to throw that thing in there, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do that. If I’m not that excited about my job search there, it’s a perfectly valid reason to want to take some time off during the holidays, to just focus on family and just finishing out this year.

However, let’s dive into the pros of applying during the holidays, you may get new employment by the end of the year. And that is an exciting thing. I think a big myth here when it comes to applying during the holidays is that people are not hiring right now. That is absolutely not true. And even last year, I kind of threw that stat out earlier, but employment over last year, we didn’t really see much change in terms of additions job additions between September and December, we saw around it 263,000. For October, September, I think was similar and 256,000 in November, and 223,000 nonfarm jobs added in December, that’s still a lot of jobs, y’all. I think depending on where your industry is, you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. Here, you have a good really good chance to stand out among your competitors. Think about all the other people who do not want to spend time to apply during the holidays, they just say I’m going to wait till January, I just don’t really want to put too much time into thinking about it. But when you have less people applying for these job openings, which are still there, then you have a higher likelihood of scoring the ones that you want not saying that, you know, jobs are going to come flying at you left and right. And now it’s still again, it’s a tougher labor market. And you know, companies generally are just trying to save a little bit more, but you still have a good chance of standing out if that’s the strategy you are going to make. So there’s no problem really with applying right now. And if you end up not getting what you want, in this year 2023. Think about how you’ve perfectly positioned yourself up for success in 2024. In fact, you’re going to be miles ahead of the folks who just woke up from their turkey, Thanksgiving, Christmas nap, whatever, something like that.

So my final take here is if it’s important that you make some sort of change in your career right now, and I would say give it an urgency level of at least a five out of 10, then start applying now. At bare minimum, get your resume in order. So if for example, you’re not even going to apply in January, at least you have the resume ready to go for when you have that short lived spike in January, you can start getting those applications out. I am going to just leave the overall concluding message of this podcast with you gotta stay competitive right now you got to make sure you have a good resume in place and start now there’s really no harm in starting now even if you do have a little bit of you know, holiday stress, you don’t want to pay too much attention to your job search in the holiday. Just take one small step I think to move forward if you are looking to make a change in your career.

Alright, so this concludes our short and sweet episode 316 of the Career Warrior Podcast. We release episodes every other Monday, so please make sure to subscribe to this podcast. And if you are on LinkedIn, I would love to connect with any of my fellow Career Warrior listeners feel free to send me a connection request with a personalized note. I will accept it of course, if I see that you are a listener, and I would love to hear about what your favorite podcast episode is. For example, again, if you are in the market for a resume service, I would love if you could head on over to letseatgrandma.com and submit your resume for a free review or talk to us on the phone. We are here for you. All right, Warriors, take care and have a great rest of your day career warrior podcast and before you go remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages.

We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process then focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.