Hiring trends do change within the seasons and go through a cyclical process, with budgets being released earlier in the year and with autumn being a peak hiring season. Spring time is generally also relatively busy for hiring.
What about summer? Summer often means people are slowing down and taking much needed vacation, and hiring can indeed slow down. Instead of interviewing, hiring managers might be busy enjoying a beach holiday and or taking time to travel and explore, since their customers are also on holiday. It’s often said that it’s the “worst time of year” for companies to hire.
Let’s explore why summer time experiences a slowdown but how you can use this time to actually be more effective at hiring and why it's a good recruiting strategy to continue your hiring and recruiting efforts for your climate-tech start-up.
Summer is for vacation and recharging
The main reason that hiring slows down in the summer is because candidates and hiring decision makers go on vacation and are less focused on working and are taking a well deserved break. Recruiters believe that exceptional talent are not looking for new challenges during the summer season, rather they are outside enjoying summer and spending their evenings or weekends enjoying the summer weather, rather than networking or looking for job or career websites.
Since many people take holidays, it’s harder for companies to schedule and organise interviews, this makes it harder to schedule interviews where potential new employees can meet your team, understand your start-up’s culture and get excited about the prospect of joining. Having candidates meet a few interviewers in one day becomes even harder.
Many businesses experience a natural slowdown during the summer, so hiring also slowdowns. However, if a role is urgent, many recruiters and hiring managers would still prioritise hiring, but in the majority of cases, peak hiring begins again in September, after summer is officially over.
Why You Should Still Focus on Hiring During the Summer for your Climate-Tech Start-up
Go against the grain
Although summer is viewed as the worst time of year for hiring, you should not slow down your hiring, instead you should take advantage of the fact that other companies are slowing down.
A proactive approach during the summer period means that you can secure exceptional talent who would be ready to join in September. In most European countries, the candidates' notice period can be between 1 month to 3 months, so if you only interview candidates in
September they are unlikely to join until November or even December. In other words, if you continue to interview during the summer and make quick hiring decisions, you can snap up excellent candidates and be on-track for your hiring plan.
A Few Reasons Why You Should Continue Recruitment Efforts during the Summer, according Climate-Tech Recruiters
Less Competition for Climate-Tech Talent
As many companies slow down their hiring processes, they assume candidates are less available. This allows your climate-tech start-up an opportunity to reach out to talent and not have to compete with many other companies, meaning you can get in touch with incredible talent before the September hiring peak approaches. In other words, you can have a significant advantage to hire the best people for your start-up.
Less Busy Time - Less Distraction
During the summer, some companies have less projects or workload. Hiring people to start during the summer time means that your founding and HR team has more capacity to onboard the new hire into your company. This leads to better integration, focused onboarding process, higher employee engagement and performance as the onboarding or training process isn’t rushed. Instead, you have had extra weeks of new hire onboarding, training and to set up your new hire for success.
Reduced Competition
September and October are typically busy months for companies as they ramp up their projects and recruiting activities after the summer break. By proactively hiring climate tech talent during the summer, you can avoid heightened competition and secure top candidates before other organisations enter the hiring frenzy. This gives you an advantage as you will be able to hire the best people for your climate-tech start-up and won’t need to compete with several other companies, vs if you were to start the recruitment process during peak hiring season.
Faster Hiring Process
Since the summer months are generally slower for hiring, you may encounter shorter turnaround times in the recruitment process. With fewer candidates in the pipeline and less internal competition for resources, you can streamline the hiring process, conduct interviews more efficiently, and extend offers faster, ensuring that you secure the best climate- tech talent before the busier months begin.
As climate-tech recruitment experts, we have gained significant experience in navigating summer hiring and have some tips to ensure you take advantage of the summer slowdown. Read on on find out about 5 strategies to hire the best talent during the summer period.
5 Strategies to Hire the Best Talent During Summer
1. Determine your interview pool
As we all know, many people will be on vacation, but there will be some interviewers who will not be taking vacation during the summer or it might be a shorter vacation. Determine who is available when and have this recorded in an interview schedule or calendar, so you know when you can schedule interviews - and propose this to candidates. Having the interviewers available a few weeks in advance will help you streamline your recruiting and decision making process, meaning you can make offers faster and hire candidates earlier.
2. Prepare decision makers and collect feedback quickly
Depending on the type of role, the interviewers and decision makers could be a variety of people. If you have interviews happening during the summertime, ensure that interviewers have recorded their feedback in an ATS (applicant tracking system) so that they don’t leave for vacation without any information about the outcome of their interviews. Although the interviewers may not be the final decision makers if you are a climate-tech start-up, you need to have the majority of the team excited about the new hire, which is why obtaining their feedback is crucial.
Equally important, if you are the hiring manager and decision maker on the hire, ensure that you inform others of what they are looking for and your ultimate rating for the candidate. For example, you interview the candidate on 1st of June and go on vacation, and the rest of the team interviews them whilst you are on holiday, make sure to brief the interview team on whether you would be happy to hire the person into your company. Be clear on whether you would be happy to hire the candidate if the rest of the interviews are positive, or if you would want to wait until you return from vacation.
3. Automate scheduling
Use tools to automate schedules and ensure that interviewer availability is tracked and up to date. This enables you to have a smooth interview process and reduces going back and forth between candidates and their schedules and finding time to align with interview schedules. It’s also good practice to front-load interviews in a specific week when all interviewers/hiring managers are available so you can assess your talent pool and be able to make decisions.
4. Manage candidates expectations and timings
It’s good practice to ensure you’re keeping candidates informed about decision making times, interview schedules and your company’s summer holidays.
Keeping candidates updates on timings e.g
“We are finalising interviews 15th of June, however will make a decision on 1st of July when the interviewers are back from vacation. Kindly let us know if you have any questions and if this timeline works for you."
5. Headhunt talent proactively for your open positions
Whilst other companies have slowed down their hiring, this is an opportune moment to have an advantage by focusing on headhunting for talent. What this means is that you have an opportunity to talk to exceptional talent proactively about your climate-tech start-up. The candidates are also more likely to have more time for discussions and to think about making a move, as they aren't bogged down in their day to day projects and workload. Instead, you can talk to them at a time where they can be more open to a change, ensuring you have an exceptional pool of talent. They are more likely to be open to a coffee chat to find out about your climate-tech start-up and consider your company as an potential employer. It's also a great time to map the talent pool for your upcoming jobs that will be open after the summer period.
It is is commonly viewed as the worst time of year to hire, a strong case can be made that companies shouldn’t pump the breaks from June through August. Contrarian thinking is often rewarded in business and a great candidate can be landed while everyone else sits on the sidelines. Looking to streamline your climate-tech hiring over the summer period? Leave it to the experts and we can help ensure you have your talent in place by September. Contact us on hello@jobsforplanet.com or leave the job details here
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