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Why October is prime hiring time for 2027.

Today, I wanna talk about timing because if you’re planning a big year in 2027, October is not too early to start hiring. In fact, now needs to be the time you start.

If you have big business goals in 2027, you need to listen to this episode because this is the time of year to land the best candidates to hit the ground running next year and actually achieve those goals and get your bonuses.

Welcome to The Animal Health Show by S8. I’m your host, Shannon Wood, and this is where we talk about the latest trends shaping the animal health industry. We’ll be sitting down with leading voices from across the sector, sharing practical insights to help you grow your animal health business, build a stronger team, or land your dream role.

If you’re looking for your next dream job, or you’re ready to hire your next standout team member, reach out to us at S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions. You’ll find our contact details in the show notes for today’s episode. All right, let’s talk animal health

There’s something that happens in businesses at this time of year. October arrives, everyone realizes Christmas is not too far away, and suddenly a whole collection of important decisions get quietly moved into the imaginary folder called “we’ll sort that out in January.” Hiring is one of the biggest ones.

People think there are only a couple of months left, school holidays are coming, there’ll be Christmas parties and annual leave, so perhaps we should just wait until the new year. On the surface, that sounds sensible.

In practice, it is exactly how businesses lose the first quarter before it’s properly started.

I understand why it happens. The end of the year can be messy. Hiring managers are traveling, candidates have holidays booked, diaries become harder to line up, and half the office mentally checks out somewhere between the first Christmas party and the appearance of leftover ham.

But your performance targets do not disappear because December is inconvenient. Your customers do not stop needing support. Your market does not stop moving, and your competitors do not all politely agree to pause until everyone’s back at their desks.

So if you wanna hit the ground running in 2027, you need to have the people in place to do it, and that means your recruitment process needs to start well before January.

The part businesses often underestimate is how much happens between saying, “We need someone,” and that person actually becoming productive in the role. Okay. First, you need to properly define the requirement.

What problem is this person being hired to solve? And what does success look like? Which capabilities are essential?

Which are teachable? And what sort of personality will work with the existing team? That briefing stage matters. If the brief is, I don’t know, vague, you do not somehow get beautifully precise results at the end. You generally get a pile of people who are almost right, followed by frustration that the market apparently does not understand what you want.

Then the search begins. We speak with the market, identify people with the right technical and commercial capability, and have proper conversations about their experience and motivations, and work out whether the opportunity is genuinely right for them.

That is important because good recruitment is not simply grabbing a resume with the correct keywords on it and firing across to an employer.

In a specialist industry, the context matters. Someone may have the right job title but the wrong customer base, and the right technical background but no appetite for commercial role or a fantastic track record in one environment that will not translate neatly into another.

The work is in the understanding the person behind the resume and the business behind the job description.

Once you have a shortlist, there is the interview process.

Most roles will involve at least a second interview, and for a senior or particularly important appointments, there may be a third conversation, a presentation, or an opportunity to meet the team.

I’m all for a thorough process, but it needs momentum.

One of the quickest ways to lose good candidates is to let a week or two drift between every stage while six people compare calendars.

Strong candidates are rarely sitting at home waiting patiently for one business to make up its mind. They are generally employed, they’re speaking with other organizations, and if they’re as good as you think they are, other people will see it too. After the interviews, you still have reference checks, final discussions, the offer, and any negotiation around salary, incentives, start dates, or flexibility.

Then, in many cases, there’s a four-week notice period and then even longer for more senior people.

Even if the whole process runs smoothly, you can see how quickly a calendar disappears.

So if you begin in late October, spend several weeks getting through a thorough process, and your chosen candidate then gives notice, you’re already pushing into December or beyond.

If you wait until January to begin, that new person may not be sitting in the role until late February, March, and certainly will not be at a full speed on day one.

That’s the difference between hiring for a vacancy you fill today and hiring for the business you’re planning to become. Smart leaders look forward.

They know that next year’s goals require capability, capacity, and leadership. And if they work backwards from the result they want, if a new territory needs to perform in the first quarter, the sales or technical persons responsible for it cannot magically appear on the first Monday in January with customer relationships already established.

If you are launching a product, expanding a division, strengthening regulatory capability, or replacing a leader, the person needs time to understand the business, meet the team, learn the products, build trust, and get clear on expectations.

This is why December can be surprisingly good month to onboard someone.

I know that may sound odd because December can feel disrupted, but used well, it gives new employee the chance to settle in before the full pressure of the new year arrives. They can learn the systems, understand how the business works, meet key colleagues, and have the conversations that often get rushed when everyone is operating at full speed.

They can absorb the culture rather than being handed a laptop and told, “Good luck. Off you go.”

The end of the year events can help too. I’m not suggesting that Christmas parties replaces an onboarding plan, because that could go in several interesting directions. But informal time with the team does help people build rapport quickly.

They can see the personalities outside of a formal meeting, understand how people communicate, begin developing that relationship, and make day-to-day work easier. So for a person joining a relationship-led sector such as animal health or animal nutrition, those connections matter. A thoughtful December can mean that when January arrives, the new employee’s not introducing themselves to everyone from scratch.

They already feel part of the business. Of course, December onboarding still needs structure. You can’t hire someone and assume the festive atmosphere will do the rest. But before they start, decide who will be available, which meetings need to happen, that they should understand by the end of their first week, first month, and first quarter.

Give them access to the systems they need to make expectations clear and ensure they know who to go to when their direct manager is away. Look, if several key people are, I don’t know, taking leave around it, good onboarding is not complicated, but it does need to be deliberate. There’s another advantage of moving in October.

You get ahead of the January crowd.

The new year creates a lot of movement. People return from holidays, reassess their lives, and decide that this year is finally gonna make the change. Businesses come back with approved budgets and start advertising at the same time. That creates opportunity, but it also creates competition.

If you’ve already spoken with the market, secured the right person, and agreed on a plan before everyone else wakes up in January, you’re in a much stronger position. And when I say secured the right person, I do not mean rushing into poor hire because the calendar says October.

Speed matters, but clarity matters more.

This is not about filling a seat before Christmas. It’s about beginning early enough that you can run a proper process without drifting. You want time to challenge the brief, test the market, meet strong candidates, and make a confident decision.

Starting now gives you that time. Waiting until the need becomes urgent usually does the opposite. Urgency makes businesses compromise, overlook warning signs, or hire someone who is available rather than someone who’s right.

It’s also worth saying that if you do not need to have every detail perfectly packaged before you speak with us…

Some leaders hesitate because the job description is not final, or they’re still deciding whether they need a technical specialist or a commercial operator or a leader who can cover both. That’s a very normal place to begin. A large part of our role is helping you think through the market. The realistic talent and what sort of person will actually deliver the result you need.

Sometimes the role a business initially describes is not the role it ultimately recruits for because the conversation reveals a different capability gap.

It’s much better to work out that at the beginning than after three months of searching for a unicorn that does not exist.

So for employees and candidates listening, October is also a good time to start a conversation.

You may not be ready to walk into your manager’s office tomorrow and resign, and nobody’s asking you to do that. But if you’re thinking about where your career is heading in 2027, now is the time to understand what is happening in the market. So what skills are employers looking for? Which parts of the industry are growing?

What opportunities might suit your experience? And where are the gaps you could start addressing now?

The strongest career moves are usually considered, not reactive.

So a confidential conversation now may help make a much better decision later. The industry is small and highly connected one. Roles are not interchangeable and neither are people.

The right appointment can open a market, strengthen a team, improve a customer relationships, and take pressure off an overstretched leader. The wrong appointment can cost a business months, damage morale, and create even more work for everyone around them.

That is why I keep coming back to timing. Give yourself the space to do it properly.

Don’t wait until the new year targets are staring at you from a spreadsheet and then you announce that you needed that person yesterday.

I know you want a massive 2027. Ask yourself a simple question: Who needs to be in the business for that to happen?

Not who might be useful one day, but which people and capabilities are genuinely connected to the plan.

Once you know that, work backwards. Allow time for the brief, the search, the interviews, the references, the offer, the notice period, and the onboarding. Suddenly, October doesn’t look early at all. It looks like the sensible starting point.

So my message is straightforward. Don’t write off December and January before they have even arrived.

Use October and November to make that decision to allow your business to start the new year properly. If you’re hiring across animal health and animal nutrition, veterinary, agribusiness, get in touch with S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions. We can help you define the role, understand the market, and find the person who can deliver your plans.

Our contact details are in the show notes, or google S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions. Give me a call. And if you’re considering your own next move, the same applies.

You do not need to wait until January to start thinking about your future.

Reach out for a confidential discussion about where the market is moving and where your skills might fit.

Thanks for listening. If this episode made you realize that your January recruitment plan should probably become an October recruitment plan, send it to the other people involved in the decision and get the conversation moving. I’m Shannon Wood from S8 Recruitment Solutions, and I’ll speak to you on the next episode of The Animal Health Show.

Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Animal Health Show by S8. If you found the value in this conversation, please share it with your colleague, an industry mate, or on social media so we can keep the discussions moving across the sector. If you’d like to get in touch, all of our details are in the show notes for today’s episode.

I thank you for listening, and I look forward to chatting with you again in the fortnight

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio