New year, new job | 3 in 5 spent the Christmas break updating their CV

Up to 19.2 million employees are planning to use downtime over the festive period to update their CV, a new survey has found.

According to new research from specialist talent solutions provider Robert Half, three in five (59%) employees will update their CV over the holidays in preparation for a fresh job search in January.

It could act as a warning for employers to brace themselves, as an additional study reveals that one in five (21%) employees are getting ready to apply for new roles in the first three months of 2022, starting from January – suggesting that ‘New Year, New You’ will include ‘New Job’ for a lot of people.

Analysis of Robert Half’s own internal data reveals that job applications usually surge in Q1. While normal candidate behaviour was disrupted last year due to the pandemic, there was an 80% increase in job applications from December 2019 and January 2020 – a trend that has held for many years.