How to stay productive during job market downtime
The job market can slow down for many reasons. Some of the reasons are not as predictable. For example, the fallout of the pandemic is a new phenomenon and many companies did not foresee the changes in consumer behaviors until late this past year leading to companies underperforming and hiring less. Other reasons, like the job market seasonality, are expected to slow down hiring annually. During certain times of the year, such as the last quarter, more companies meet their headcount, and more employees take vacations, so hiring naturally cools off.
In any job market slow down, instead of doubling down your effort to apply for jobs or simply accepting our fate and waiting around, we may want to consider shifting our focus to other efforts in order to continue our career growth or set ourselves up for success when the job market warms up again. For your reference, below are the three main efforts I invest time in.
Self-reflection
Self-reflection has been extremely helpful to me in checking my growth progress as well as setting goals.
