If you find yourself actively job searching during the holiday period, the waiting can feel especially drawn out, perhaps more so than at any other point in the year. A single day between updates can feel far longer than twenty-four hours when you are anxious for news on your next step, and that feeling is completely normal.

There are a few things that can genuinely help reduce the uncertainty during this particular stretch of the calendar. Never feel hesitant about asking your contact, whether that is the hiring manager, an internal recruiter or an agency recruiter, about realistic timelines for the next step or for the process as a whole.

Realistic is the key word here. No one is scheduling interviews on Boxing Day, and expecting movement in that window is only setting yourself up for unnecessary disappointment and frustration. It also helps to remember that while landing your next role might feel like your absolute top priority right now, it is not necessarily the top priority for everyone else involved in the process at this exact moment.

People on the other side of the table are also wrapping up their own work for the year and thinking about their own families, holidays and time off. Factoring that in can genuinely help you manage your own expectations and emotions around the pace of things over this period.

As a general guide, many organisations hiring over this stretch are realistically expecting successful candidates to start around February rather than immediately in the new year. No recruiter has a perfect hit rate on timelines, and things do shift, but that does not mean you should stay quiet if you are genuinely wondering where things stand.

Reaching out for a call or an email update, simply to check in or have a chat, is always a reasonable thing to do, holidays included, and it beats sitting with the uncertainty alone.