Looking for a job change: which is the best season

Season is an important factor for job serach

I fattori "intangibili" nello scrivere il CV - La stagione

One of my favourite quotes is:

There is no season but summer! So beautiful it is, that other seasons constantly circle around it. Autumn recalls it, Winter invokes it, Spring envies it and as a mischievous child tries to ruin it.

– Ennio Flaiano

Is summer the ideal season for writing and sending out resumès?

From the point of view of traditional job searching, summer is not the best time of the year: vacancies are few in number and job adverts on the net are always the same. Companies and their workers are busy finishing up ongoing projects before the staff take some well-deserved time off and go on holiday. Newsletters, events, meetings and all other forms of communication (articles, features, TV and radio shows etc.) are suspended for the whole month of August, and sometimes even from mid-July to mid-September.

Some things, however, never go on holiday: the Internet, people’s ideas and “strategies”, as well as communication among individuals.

There are two pieces of advice I feel like giving, then:

These are two different but complementary actions that sometimes should be carried out one after the other.

If you have already decided what you want to do and have a plan (which includes a CV, among other things), you can use the summer to talk to people within your direct or indirect network and send your proposal around: let people know what you can do and what you’re looking for, or what you can offer and to whom.

If your plan is not clearly defined yet, you can use your networking skills in a different way: you can try to get an idea about the market or about the people that can give you advice or somehow help you, or you can introduce yourself to new people, or work on new ideas.

You can gather your thoughts and give them an order. You can analyse, self-analyse, think up again, reflect on your professional life and on yourself.

Taking some distance from work - even a physical distance – gives you the chance to looking at yourselves from the outside and take stock of your professional history. It can help you in deciding whether it’s time to take back control and stop letting things just flow.

That doesn’t necessarily imply that you should make drastic changes.

There are many paths that can be explored.

One option is to stick with the same company while trying to make some career progress.

Another option is to leave your company and take up the same position in a different one.

You can change role, broadening your responsibilities, or take a long break and do a training course, or again, do the course while you’re still on the job…

You might invest time and money in acquiring a new language, or a new professional skill…

Another suggestion may be to systematically write down your work history in terms of achievements and roles, substantiating it with data and figures, and with that material in hand, rewrite your CV with the help of a professional.

I’m not suggesting using your holidays to work, but rather using it for yourself, which you’ll agree is not a bad idea.