No Time to Rest on Your Year-End Laurels

While many consider the end of a year the proper time to wind down, Travis Medley at Bitesize Bio says that job-seekers would be remiss to ignore the holiday hiring "rush" that often occurs in the fourth quarter, the period in which "many staffing firms have their strongest months." According to Medley, many companies intensify their employee searches at the end of the year. "Now is not the time to take a break from your search," he says, adding that "it's time to ramp up." Through the year's end, he adds, job-seekers "who choose to sit on the sidelines can find themselves behind the hiring curve and may miss some outstanding opportunities." Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education's On Hiring blog, Gene Fant says that at academic institutions, "more shortlists for candidates are generated during December than during any other month of the year." The last few weeks of December are "critical to the hiring season," Fant says.