LinkedIn Data Reveals an Overlooked Opportunity for Recruiters in January

Maeve Ryan

Data Science at Intercom

January 10, 2020

The month of January takes its name from Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology. We tacitly acknowledge that each year when we make resolutions — to exercise more, learn a new skill, call home more often.

Data from LinkedIn suggests that talent acquisition professionals might want to make a resolution to seize an opportunity that crops up every January: posting jobs.

Why? Because our data shows that while job seekers are particularly active at the beginning of the year, job posters aren’t — which creates an opening for savvy recruiters and hiring managers.

Image of the following text: January is the month with: Most views per job post - 7% above average Most applications per job post - 9% above average Fewest live job posts - 15% below average

Here are the details:

There are more views and applications per job in January than in any other month

Job hunting goes cold at the end of each year, with November and December being the months when jobs get the fewest views per posting and December also having the fewest applicants per posting.

But, reenergized by the holiday break and refocused by the promise of a new year, job hunters kick January off with a vengeance. Globally, live jobs in January get more views and more applications per posting than in any other month.

To find talent, organizations can leverage employee enthusiasm for personal reinvention

Companies are not fully capitalizing on the renewed focus of job hunters. There are fewer live jobs in January than in any other month. Indeed, companies are typically very slow to start the year — the first six months of the year are also the slowest six months of the year for job posts. By contrast, October and November are the busiest two months of the year.

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With a little bit of planning, organizations can tap into the intense interest workers have for self-improvement or complete reinvention.

Given all the people who are scouring posts and applying for the smaller number of jobs available at the beginning of the year, there may be an opportunity for companies to uncover hard-to-find talent simply by hiring at the beginning of the year rather than toward the end of it.

Perhaps one resolution this year should be to kick off your search for talent as early as possible. That way, when you also fulfill your resolution to call home, you’ll have plenty of good news about how you’re crushing it at work.

Methodology: We analyzed, by monthly average, views of and applications of about 33 million paid jobs that were live on the LinkedIn platform from 2016 to 2018. We gave the top month (in both cases it was January) a 1.00 ranking and then, for every other month, expressed the number as its percentage when compared to January (all smaller than 1.00).

We also looked at the job posts, by monthly average, that were live on the platform for the same three-year period. We included paid jobs that received at least one view. In this case, we gave the month with the smallest number of live jobs (again, January) a 1.00 ranking. We gave every other month a ranking that was expressed as a percentage when compared to January (all larger than 1.00).

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Topics: Job descriptions Data insights