Anyone else suffering from a holiday lull?

[vadhert]

True, I am seeing a lot of permie jobs which don't interest me whatsoever.

[Sam Sung]

I'm in a contract but keeping my ear to the ground, the dog has been pretty quiet last couple of months, luckily I've got expenses screwed down damn tight, so stuffing the old warchest in grand style.

Good luck all cv's pumped out, chins
up and chin-chin !!!

[Andy2]

First week of october and still no sign of contract market revival.

[Milkyway]

First week of october and still no sign of contract market revival.

Absolutely true.

At this rate, I think all the cunning efforts of Gideon around S/D/C, IR35 shake-up, etc. are going to be a pile of waste , since there isn't going to be any real contract jobs to go around, hence no worries around these legislations

I don't understand why the tories think that the contractors are struggling to choose from 100s of jobs offered, and are hence making millions, and could be useful to tax them to hell.
George - honestly, do you even realize what you have done to this market???

[uk contractor]

I have not known it to be this quiet its back to 2008 recession era activity. Some of the below is why:

1: Perm roles are being held open longer to attract perms instead of converting to a contractor position. Good long term idea but when there is so much discrimination against contractor background applicants its pretty mind boggling who they actually want to employ (job hopping perms are their target but they cannot advertise they prefer perm background applicants can they!).
2: Lots of Outsourcers are nabbing all the large banks (Computacenter, Computer People, Dell Associates, Plan-Net, Accenture, Fujitsu etc etc offering way below market rates & keeping the majority of the % themselves leaving crumbs for the contractors).
3: Lot of cheap import workers doing it for a fraction of the cost that a UK born IT worker could survive on. I have worked at major financial services site(s) where they are getting £100 a day if they are lucky & its being charged to the client at £400-500 a day!!
4: The real world economy has been stuck in zero growth for many years now this is reflected in low pay rises for perms & lack of proper perm jobs. More often than not unless its a business critical role perms are not being replaced with another perm (unless its headcount protection). So they hire an experienced contractor for a short time then no extension for that person so they are back to the jobseeking bench.

If by end of October its still the same book your winter holidays (on the career bench to downtime!!) there is unlikely to be much change in Nov-Dec or even early Jan as the market is generally quiet then anyway.

Obviously I hope I am wrong but a lot of these vacancies being advertised are not even real anyway or its the same duplicate role from multiple agencies (IME 30-40% fake or duplicate job ads is probably accurate). Agency staff worried for their mainly commission only jobs create fake ads & or repost old ads to generate virtual work to make it seem they are busy in the office instead of doing nothing as the demand is low.

[squarepeg]

First week of october and still no sign of contract market revival.

There are some green shoots, but the clients are driving a hard bargain. Also, they are still hell-bent on perm role. I really fail to understand why? Managers not having enough subs to abuse?

[vadhert]

I just picked something up at a good rate. I smelt a bit of underhandedness from the agent as the interview went well however the agent phoned me the next day to inform me of 'a change of requirements - sorry'.

However after inquiring on stinked-in with the interviewer, I get a phone call from the agent saying 'Sorry there was some confusion and they want you.'

[squarepeg]

I have not known it to be this quiet its back to 2008 recession era activity. Some of the below is why:

1: Perm roles are being held open longer to attract perms instead of converting to a contractor position. Good long term idea but when there is so much discrimination against contractor background applicants its pretty mind boggling who they actually want to employ (job hopping perms are their target but they cannot advertise they prefer perm background applicants can they!).
2: Lots of Outsourcers are nabbing all the large banks (Computacenter, Computer People, Dell Associates, Plan-Net, Accenture, Fujitsu etc etc offering way below market rates & keeping the majority of the % themselves leaving crumbs for the contractors).
3: Lot of cheap import workers doing it for a fraction of the cost that a UK born IT worker could survive on. I have worked at major financial services site(s) where they are getting £100 a day if they are lucky & its being charged to the client at £400-500 a day!!
4: The real world economy has been stuck in zero growth for many years now this is reflected in low pay rises for perms & lack of proper perm jobs. More often than not unless its a business critical role perms are not being replaced with another perm (unless its headcount protection). So they hire an experienced contractor for a short time then no extension for that person so they are back to the jobseeking bench.

If by end of October its still the same book your winter holidays (on the career bench to downtime!!) there is unlikely to be much change in Nov-Dec or even early Jan as the market is generally quiet then anyway.

Obviously I hope I am wrong but a lot of these vacancies being advertised are not even real anyway or its the same duplicate role from multiple agencies (IME 30-40% fake or duplicate job ads is probably accurate). Agency staff worried for their mainly commission only jobs create fake ads & or repost old ads to generate virtual work to make it seem they are busy in the office instead of doing nothing as the demand is low.

Spot on.

Re 2. Hitachi is looking for contractors willing to do 3 days in Stuttgart, Germany (you pay for the flights and hotel, they reimburse) and 2 days in Maidenhead (commute reimbursed). Unrealistic at £450, but this is the market today. Also unrealistic from the point of view of keeping your performance levels up, but who gives **** about that.

[uk contractor]

Spot on.

Re 2. Hitachi is looking for contractors willing to do 3 days in Stuttgart, Germany (you pay for the flights and hotel, they reimburse) and 2 days in Maidenhead (commute reimbursed). Unrealistic at £450, but this is the market today. Also unrealistic from the point of view of keeping your performance levels up, but who gives **** about that.

£450 a day that's a joke you would be very tired/rundown doing this for long your health would suffer. Have they not heard of modern videoconferencing & or virtual remote desktops!

There is no business case to have people travel offsite is there when modern remote tools can do it all & you have more time/energy to do the job in hand. That's exactly the sort of role they should outsource to a cheap import worker via the outsourcers who love flooding the end client with their £100 a day top men

[SussexSeagull]

This is all rather worrying (and I am in contract until March).