How to Use Seasonal Slowdowns to Advance Your Career

When the job market or pace of work slows—whether during the summer months or the holiday season—seize this opportunity to propel your career forward; engage in essential decision-making, strategic planning, and relationship-building. By making the most of these slower times, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running when things pick up. Here’s how to leverage these moments for maximum benefit.

Career decision-making: conduct due diligence

Gaining clarity around your career path or job target can be self-motivating and help you to move forward more efficiently. A clear goal will clarify the gaps you need to fill as well as the content required for a resonant pitch to your target audience. Both are particularly important if you’re seeking to pivot your career to a different level, role, or industry. Sharing a clear job target or career path with others also makes it easier for your network to help you.

To improve your odds of making the best decision, offload the decision-making criteria swirling around in your head; input the criteria onto a spreadsheet or sheet of paper to ensure you’ve captured and accurately weighed all the things that are important to you. I created a couple of free templates that can help you with ranking your career options based on your decision-making criteria. These criteria include what you enjoy doing that you do well, what work-related values you don’t want to compromise on (money, flexible schedule, mission, getting a job quickly, etc.), and your vision for your career 5-10 years from now.

Plan, to ensure you’re set up for success

For a job search, create a one-page “marketing plan” that you can share with others to make it easier for them to help you. Include your job target, your competitive differentiator, and a list of organizations your audience may know to jog their memory regarding people with whom they can connect you.

For on-the-job success, create a Strategic Success Plan: “Where am I now,” “Where do I want to go,” and “How will I get there.” Your SSP should include things like a self-assessment and personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), SMART goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) that’s informed by your self-assessment, leadership initiatives to stand out, relationship management, and professional development.

Build and maintain career-advancing relationships

For on-the-job success, create and review your Stakeholder Map. This list of key work relationships includes anyone at, above, or below your level who depends on you for their success or who you depend on for your success. Review this map once a quarter to identify opportunities for improving a relationship, and to ensure nothing festers that could damage your career later. Avoiding people who make you uncomfortable is part of human nature, but avoidance may not be best for your career; the wrong word could sabotage your promotion or get you laid off.

Sometimes all it takes to improve a relationship is a simple “good morning,” or an effort to grab a coffee together; if you work virtually, do a “virtual coffee.” Other times the solution is less obvious or more difficult and calls for additional steps.

For a job search internally or externally, start tapping into the hidden job market. If those who could hire or refer you are not on vacation during this slow season, they’ll have more time to speak with you than when things start to heat up.

Think broadly about your network – family, friends, colleagues from 10 years ago, your dentist, old professors, friendly colleagues at work who you rarely interact with, etc. Anyone who might be open to helping you (and vice versa) is in your network. Apply the science of weak ties to your networking strategy, by keeping in mind that the people you least expect are often the ones who come through for you.

Then you’ll need to come up with a strategy to let them know about your search, one that incorporates a powerful pitch. And ultimately, great networking is about keeping in touch. Use this seasonal lull to establish a contact management system so you remember who to follow up with and when. Otherwise, you’ll miss opportunities. In a job search you should be keeping in touch with everyone in your network every three to six weeks. If you’re not in a job search, then aim for once a quarter (for those in your field) to twice a year.

For most of my clients, a spreadsheet works just fine for their contact management system. If you have access to a professional CRM (“Customer Relationship Management”) system, by all means use that. Many inexpensive CRMs can work; just search for “free CRM” or “small business CRM.”

Whatever system you’re using, make sure the following two fields are filled in for every person in the system: “Next Action” and “Date of Next Action.”