State of the Market

[jamesbrown]

All of the above. Would also add people met at conferences/workshops. Had quite a lot of work that way, often indirect (i.e., person who knows the person I met). Always worth attending major events and presenting/meeting potential clients and competitors, especially if you have a niche.

[hungry_hog]

Had 4 contracts from friend of a friend at Uni - 29 months, 20 months, 6 months and 6 months (running) - total over 5 years.
Three at the same client, the initial interview for which was about 25 mins and I didn't even know the subject area. Sometimes clients just want someone willing to put the work in and apply basic business analysis principles.
I think network has become even more important as the old route of putting CV on jobserve / Indeed / CW jobs is useless with population of Shanghai that seem to apply for each job (half of which turn out to be already gone or even fake).

[sreed]

Definitely going to get tuliped for this, but what exactly do people mean by "my network" ?

- previous clients?
- agents who got you a role in the past ?
- agents you regularly talk to?
- friends/former colleagues, whom you know to be working at ?
- all of the above?

It's a fairly common term on these forums, but kind of fuzzy.

Jim

For me it’s previous clients (specifically the smaller firms with more hiring autonomy) and ex-colleagues.

I’m terrible at networking. I don’t ever recommend anyone to a role and rarely ever ask around about any potential contracts.

[TwoWolves]

I've been doing this for 19 years (just started my 20th year of trading) and I've spent three months, two on the bench, unsuccessful in securing the next gig. Rates are down and expectations are up. Agents won't look at CV if it doesn't exactly look like the spec. My network has nothing coming up in their pipelines, whereas previously I'd be expecting one or two approaches from people wanting to line me up for their projects.

Yep, the market is in a severe recession. That is certain and I think this is going to be a very long one.

[Fraidycat]

Yep, the market is in a severe recession depression. That is certain and I think this is going to be a very long one.

FTFY, I think it's safe to say the market is in a severe 'Depression'

Although it seems there is no formal definition of that term, google says it is typically a sustained 10% or more drop in GDP.

The UK contract market (number of jobs) is down something like 80%+ from peak. And for way more than just 2 quarters in row...

[sreed]

The UK contract market (number of jobs) is down something like 80%+ from peak. And for way more than just 2 quarters in row...

Down 80%+ from peak?! What do you base that on?

The ONS data on people in contracts (unsure as to how exactly that’s defined) has the latest quarter number at around 575k, equivalent quarter the previous year being 800k, the equivalent quarter in the 4-5 years prior ranging from 500-750k.

At least in my experience (both looking for contracts and the use of contractors within clients) over the past few years, I definitely haven’t seen a drop of 80%+ in requirements, though there does appears to be a much larger pool of applicants in play for anything IT/IT-related.

[avonleigh]

Down 80%+ from peak?! What do you base that on?

The ONS data on people in contracts (unsure as to how exactly that’s defined) has the latest quarter number at around 575k, equivalent quarter the previous year being 800k, the equivalent quarter in the 4-5 years prior ranging from 500-750k.

At least in my experience (both looking for contracts and the use of contractors within clients) over the past few years, I definitely haven’t seen a drop of 80%+ in requirements, though there does appears to be a much larger pool of applicants in play for anything IT/IT-related.

80% is about right. If you look on itjobswatch you will see most roles are down 80% from their historic average. Not all roles of course but standard roles like testing, dev, ba and pm's.

[sreed]

80% is about right. If you look on itjobswatch you will see most roles are down 80% from their historic average. Not all roles of course but standard roles like testing, dev, ba and pm's.

Where exactly are you seeing that? When I searched for PM job title this is what I get.



For 'Project Manager' job title under contracts it says 5.49% of "Historical Absolute & Relative Jobs Vacancies". And 0.64% for IT PM. Are you saying that it means PM contract roles are down 95% from the 'historical average' (whatever that's supposed to mean)? And 99% down for IT PM roles? That's nonsense. If those stats were even remotely true, as a generalist PM I'd be long out of contract and/or working for £100/day!

For perm, PM shows as less than 4%, even worse than contract PM roles. Again, that's just nonsense.

That % looks more like the proportion of total roles made up by that role.

[willendure]

That % looks more like the proportion of total roles made up by that role.

Has to be. The column is confusingly title "Historical Absolute and Relative", whatever that means.

There are some absolute figures too. For example for Project Manager, it has 2129 (historical absolute?) and then 449 live. So that means right now there are 21% (449 as a % of 2129) of the historical avarage for open roles? Or down by 80% as FraidyCat states.

[willendure]

Question for you all. If we are right now in a recession or depression (whatever that means), why is it not mainstream news? 90s recession, dot-com, gfc, covid recessions were all big news stories.

Is it because central banks and governments are massaging figures and lying too avoid spreading a panic and still talking up the soft-landing narrative?

Or is it still early days and contracting is just one of the canaries in the mine?

Or is it that some other fundamental has shifted in our industry and not connected to the wider economy? For example, the huge amount of legal migration and T2 visas discussed earlier in this thread? Cheap bums on seats and more work going to big consultancies and out sourcing to the sub-continent of India?