Every recruiter gets asked this: “Is now a good time to be looking?” usually in terms of the time of year and the market.
The honest answer is that the calendar matters less than people think, and matters differently to how they think. Here’s what I’ve actually seen, year after year, working real estate searches.
The August myth (which is also half true)
July and August are quiet. That bit isn’t a myth. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s own labour market data consistently shows new job postings dip three to four per cent in August against the rest of the year, and anyone who has tried to get five people in a room for an interview panel in the last two weeks of August knows why: half of them are in Cornwall or the Dordogne, and the other half are covering for the half that are.
But quiet doesn’t mean nothing happens. It means something different happens. Senior people who wouldn’t normally find forty-five minutes for a coffee suddenly have forty-five minutes, because their own diaries have gone quiet too. Clients who’ve been putting off a difficult conversation about a hire finally have the breathing room to have it, because the usual fires aren’t burning. Some of my most honest conversations with both candidates and clients have happened in August, precisely because nobody feels the pressure of a live process.
Last year I’d planned two weeks off in August. It was the last summer before my daughter started school and I wasn’t going to get that one back. It turned out to be the busiest two weeks of my career: I won three senior retained searches in seven days. None of them completed in August, obviously, searches at that level take months, but all three started because of conversations that only happened because everyone involved had a bit of headspace they don’t get the rest of the year.
September isn’t always September anymore
The received wisdom is that everything restarts properly in September. LinkedIn’s own hiring data backs this up: a distinct second peak in job postings across September and October, roughly mirroring the bump you see in January. Everyone plans around it.
What I’m finding, particularly the last few summers, is that the restart is arriving later than people expect. European summers have got hotter and longer, and the people without school-age children, or with children who don’t start term until well into September, are simply away for longer than they used to be. I’ve had searches where the person we most wanted to speak to genuinely wasn’t back and switched on until the first week of October. September as a concept still holds. September as a date on the calendar has drifted.
December: quiet, and also not quiet at all
Everyone believes nothing happens in December, and largely they’re right, in that decision-making slows and calendars empty out. But two things happen underneath that quiet. First, some of the other things competing for a hiring manager’s attention (their own reviews, budget planning, the general scramble of year end) go quiet too, which sometimes means hiring finally gets to the top of the pile rather than staying at the bottom of it. Second, there’s a real “use it or lose it” dynamic with budget. A headcount that isn’t filled by year end can simply disappear from next year’s plan. I’ve seen clients move faster in the second half of December than they had all autumn, purely because the money was sitting there and about to vanish.
January’s false start
January produces a genuine wave of candidates. Some of that is New Year, new job thinking, and it’s real: surveys consistently show more than one in ten people actively job hunting as the year turns. But that wave is candidates, not process. Hiring managers come back in January with good intentions and a list, and then discover that sign-off, budget approval and getting a brief properly agreed all take longer than the enthusiasm suggests. The candidates are ready in week one. The actual hiring often isn’t ready until March.
The bonus bump, and why March to June is busy
Once bonuses land, typically February and March for most of the market, another wave of candidates starts looking: people who were waiting to see the number before they’d even consider a conversation. Hiring against that wave lags a little, as it always does, but by the time it catches up, March through to June tends to be the busiest, most productive stretch of the year. If you’re planning a move, it’s worth knowing that this is when the market is genuinely working hardest for you, not January.
There’s no perfect time
None of this means you should sit on your hands until the “right” month arrives.
If you decide in January that you want a new role by the end of Q1, you may well be disappointed, particularly at senior level and particularly when the market is a bit dampened, because a proper process for a serious role takes longer than a quarter, whatever the calendar says.
The better approach is to be ahead of where you want to be. Keep one eye on the market even when you’re not actively looking. Talk to a recruiter you trust before you need one, so that when the right conversation does come along, in August, in December, whenever it actually happens, you’re already in it rather than starting from scratch.
