Ahhh, summer is here and that means things are pretty quiet at the office. It’s therefore also a time when people think that hiring new employees rarely happens. Wrong!
If you are a hiring manager, here are 4 reasons why hiring during the summer is a strategically wise thing to do:
1 – Flexibility: If things are quiet for you at the office, most likely you have a lot of flexibility and more time to really focus on hiring the right people. A lot of candidates do take vacations during the summer, but the candidates who don’t usually vacation still have more flexibility in their work schedules. Perhaps they are taking a “staycation” and therefore have lots of room to move things around. Bottom line, if you need to schedule interviews, it is relatively easy to do during the warmer months.
2 – Less competition: Companies tend not to do a lot of hiring during the summer,  so if you choose to do so, you will have far less competition. Even in a softer market, the best candidates — the A+ candidates — always have more than one opportunity available to them. If you interview and hire during the summer, candidates tend to be entertaining fewer options, so your chance of scoring a top performer is improved.
3 – The process can move faster:  If everyone at your company who is involved in the hiring decisions is available all at once, the interview and hiring processes can move extremely fast. You won’t have a plethora of work deadlines interfering, making everyone’s schedule a little bit calmer. I once placed a candidate, in July, from resume submission to signed offer in 11 days.  This involved four people coming together in a short span of time and because it was done in the summer, we easily got things done.
4 – A smoother integration: Integrating and “on-boarding” a new hire during the summer is often smoother as well, because they aren’t thrown right into the fire, and you can spend more time training them. Any on-boarding issues that arise can be dealt with more readily and will be less conflicting with deadlines and responsibilities that ramp up come September.
So, enjoy the next few months. Take more walks, spend some time at the beach, hit the patio for lunch, but consider making some time to find the next star for your team. And find yourself revisiting that patio in no time.