We have a new year coming up, which means the holidays will very soon be behind us, so today I want to show you a few things for your job search that you can set up now, to hit the ground running in January.

This blog originated from a video that’s posted on my YouTube Channel; here’s a quick link to this video if you’d rather watch it: https://youtu.be/iwrJOYK7i7E

First, I do want to say that the 4th quarter of the year is the absolute best time of the year to find a job. Period.

I’ve been recruiting for about 20 years, and every single year, with only 1 exception, the last 3 months of the year, the 4th quarter, is always my best quarter of my year (2008 when the market crashed in October was the one exception).

Companies have to use up their hiring budgets, they want to be set for the new year, and frankly, most job seekers don’t think anyone is hiring so they’re not even trying. That means…

there are less people going after the same amount of jobs!

Jobs open and close very quickly in the 4h quarter. So watch for them and react quickly, it’s a great time to be aggressively looking.

During the last 2 weeks of the year, however, response times will slow for a lot of companies. It’s not a long period of time, just a couple weeks, but it creates a perfect opportunity for job seekers to tighten up their strategy and fine tune some of the things you wouldn’t ordinarily have time to do.

For example, did you ever get around to making a resume template and cover letter template? I’m sure you’ve heard by now that you need to customize your resume and cover letter for each position you apply to, but without easy to customize templates, those can take hours.

I recently gave a seminar a couple nights ago in Orland Hills and a guy there said it takes him about 2 hours per application to get everything customized! 2 hours! It doesn’t have to be that way. Create templates using bulleted formats so you can easily shift things around, and that will save you incredible amounts of time.

Unless you have a relationship inside the company, customization is a must, so use this holiday time to get that done.

We offer these templates in SpeedUpMyJobSearch.com if you don’t want to build them yourself, but these are critical elements to the speed of your job search, so get those ready for January.

Next, create an application plan. What I mean is, a specific time of day that you designate for going through all those email alerts that are sending you jobs. If you’re constantly looking at those throughout the entire day as they come in, it can get overwhelming, you start missing good leads, and it gets stressful.

Instead, set aside one or two 30 minute time-slots every day, starting in January to power through those emails, then stop looking at them because you know you’ll get to them again later and they won’t be constantly hanging over your head.

Also set aside designated times to send the initial networking emails and calls to get into those companies BEFORE you apply. Remember, the apply button is the slowest way to land a job; network first, THEN designate the time for resume customization for the applications.

When you set time aside in your schedule for specific activities, you’ll be amazed at how much more you can get done every day.

The third thing that’s important you do, is to give yourself some training. Searching for a job today is totally different than it was just a couple years ago.

You need to be intentional on social media and manage it correctly, you need to understand how to take advantage of new digital opportunities to network into jobs efficiently, and there are some incredibly popular huge mistakes you need to know how to avoid. This is a great chance to study all that stuff.

Speedupmyjobsearch.com is a great resource for that information and for personalized coaching in our private member forum where you can actually ask questions, but if you’d rather just read a book, that’s great too, but actually go get the book and read it.

We even have recommended books page you can look at right now, I’ve recorded my interviews with the authors for you so you can hear some of their thoughts directly. Although you can’t ask them questions, you can at least you can get a sense for their personalities.

I have a free 10 Day Job Search Challenge that you can start right now just by going to www.SpeedUpMyJobSearch.com/ten.

Why not give these a try? The question isn’t if they will help you, the strategies taught have proven already that they work. The question is, what’s holding you back from taking the steps you need to take to help yourself? Try these two links, the webinar and the challenge, and get into your next job sooner.

Take these steps to get your job search ready to hit the ground running come January 1st. Holidays don’t have to stall your search, you can do this. Happy holidays everyone.