节日期间才是求职的大好时机

    你的日程上现在肯定被购物、包装礼物和各种额外的差事排得满满的，至少在一月份之前，找新工作这件事一定被排在了最后。

    达拉斯猎头公司Babich & Associates的总裁托尼•贝什拉认为：“节日期间，大多数求职者都会暂停求职。但事实上，现在却是找工作的绝佳时机。”贝什拉已有41年猎头工作经验。

    一方面，由于积极求职的人减少，面临的竞争自然更少。有时候，你只要出现在面试现场，便能给潜在雇主留下深刻的印象。贝什拉说道：“曾经有一位求职者在圣诞节前夜放下手头的事情，驱车前往达拉斯-沃斯堡机场，去见一位招聘经理。他恰好路过那里，要临时停留两个小时。这位求职者竟然愿意牺牲圣诞节前夜的时间来见他，这让那位面试官很受感动，于是他当场拍板，录用了那位求职者。”

    即便最执拗的商务旅行者，也不愿意在节日期间被困在冰天雪地里，或者滞留在远离家人的机场。所以，贝什拉表示，一年的最后两个星期，大多数负责招聘的人都呆在办公室里，“而且他们有大把时间来进行面试。”

    不仅如此，他还表示：“每年的这个时候，面试官往往心情更好，如果拿到了令人满意的年终奖金，他们的心情会格外舒畅。”而且，在今年，出现这种情况的可能性更高。光辉国际（Korn/Ferry）的一项调查发现，有36%的公司计划发放的高管奖金高于去年，而计划减少奖金的公司仅有15%。

    如果你曾做过尝试，但却没有在自己心仪的公司得到面试机会，现在应该再试一次。2014年前三个季度，许多雇主的招聘速度异常缓慢，现在他们可能面临着最终期限。贝什拉表示：“许多公司清楚他们需要为新的一年招聘人才，但招聘经理却将招聘计划推迟了几个月。所以，他们现在有动机将招聘进行下去。”

    众所周知，办公室派对和其他节假日活动是很好的机会，因为在这些场合，求职者可以跟有可能知道职位空缺的人交流，但有时候，这种聚会不仅可以进行社交。贝什拉的一位雇主邀请一位求职者参加公司下午举办的圣诞节派对，尽管那位求职者尚未被公司聘用。那位经理开怀畅饮几杯之后，给那位求职者提供了一个职位。

    贝什拉说道：“可惜的是，他第二天根本不记得这件事。但幸运的是，醉醺醺的他还是将那位求职者带到人力资源部，让他们出具了书面的工作邀请。”真是好运气。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

       With all the shopping, wrapping, and extra errands cluttering your calendar right now, looking for a new job has probably dropped to the bottom of your to-do list, at least until January.

    “Most job seekers hit the pause button during the holidays,” notes Tony Beshara, president of Dallas headhunting firm Babich & Associates, who has been an executive recruiter for 41 years. “But this can be a great time to find a new job.”

    For one thing, since fewer people are actively looking, you have less competition. Sometimes you can wow a prospective employer just by showing up. “I had one job candidate who dropped everything on Christmas Eve and drove to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport to meet with a hiring manager who happened to be passing through and had a two-hour layover,” says Beshara. “The interviewer was so impressed by the candidate’s willingness to sacrifice his time on the night before Christmas, he hired the guy on the spot.”

    Even diehard road warriors would rather not risk getting snowed in, or otherwise stuck, at an airport far from home for the holidays. So, during the last two weeks of the year, most people in a position to hire you are sitting at their desks, Beshara says, “and they have lots of time to conduct interviews.”

    Not only that, he adds, but “people are in a better mood at this time of year, especially if they’re happy with their annual bonus.” At the moment, that seems more likely than not. A survey from Korn/Ferry found that 36% of companies are planning to give higher bonuses to their executives than last year, more than twice the 15% that say bonuses will shrink.

    If you’ve tried and failed to get an interview with a company where you’d like to work, try again. Plenty of employers who have been unusually slow to bring new people on board in the first three quarters of 2014 may now be up against a deadline. “Some companies know they need to hire for the first of the year, and hiring managers have been putting it off for months,” Beshara observes. “So they’re motivated to get the process rolling.”

    We’ve all heard that office parties and other holiday festivities can be a great chance to chat with people who might know of job openings, but now and then these get-togethers go way beyond networking. Beshara had one employer as a client who invited a job seeker to the company’s afternoon Christmas bash, even though the candidate had not yet been hired. The manager then tipped quite a few glasses of holiday cheer and offered the candidate the job.

    “Unfortunately, he didn’t remember this the next day,” Beshara says. “Luckily, in his inebriated state, he had walked the candidate to the HR office and told them to put the offer in writing.” Ho, ho, ho.