Ready ... Steady ... Resign!

I received a letter from Hays Recruitment trying to push some prospective Admin/PA candidates on to me for future reference. I would normally bin circulars like this, until I saw the information they included in there about resignations in the month of September.



According to their source, Resource on Demand, the third week of September is the busiest time for resignations to occur with a whopping 37% of all of the years total in the UK (yes, 37%!!!) happening during this week. A further 24% of the year’s resignations take place in February after people start coming back from Christmas leave.


I was a little worried by the name of the firm as it conjured images of conversations along the lines of “Yeah is that Resource on Demand? Yeah I need some stats to prove my point ASAP – what you got?”. That might be a cynic talking but why not check their site and judge it for yourself? I think Hays suggestion in their letter of it taking two months (including notice) for people to find roles was a little optimistic – I would always veer nearer three months and maybe a couple more weeks on top in this climate – but it is aimed at the benefit of their marketing, so understandable.


I have always believed in the often mentioned two post annual leave peaks just after the Summer and then the new year giving a shot in the arm to recruitment, though there does seem to be a large amount of it all occurring at these two points if this data is to be relied upon – again, I stress I have no reason to think it is not (ROD and Hays please don’t sue me - I’m just writing a blog post after a hopeful fishing letter from Hays. What does that tell you? I’m not a threat!).

Image via Wikipedia

This man is acutely aware of the dangers of employment markets affected by holiday seasons. By man, I mean the guy on the right with the beard. The one on the left aint sweating any of that yet.

But assuming it is correct, what can this tell this about the current recruitment market we are in? Furthermore, is it also an insight as to the value of annual leave and the need for staff to take their full allowance?


Examining the recruitment market in the first instance, if we accept the stats from ROD we should be experiencing a slight upturn over the course of the last two weeks and the coming two or three with organisations looking to start filling the gaps, counter offers being thrashed out and people in general moving around. This sounds great but would be of real value if we were able to get some benchmarking data for this time last year… or in 2008 … or maybe even in 2006/2007 when the current markets graduate intake were enrolling at university maybe? I could go on but you get the picture.


I think the real kicker if we accept this data is what it tells us about the value of having a period of quiet reflection to look at yourself, your professional life and what you want from it – in short being sure to take your annual leave entitlement. Seems as though over 60% of us only realise what we want to do for our next career move or what we want more of from our 35-40 hours at work a week once we have been forced to take a break longer than a longer weekend from our place of work.


So next time your think your boss is giving you a hard time and you are not sure why you are doing what you are doing each day, perhaps subconsciously you are telling yourself you need a rest from the daily grind to think things through.

And what have you got to lose? Seems like more than half of us are going through it at the same time – we just leave it to people like ROD to talk about it for us!