State of the Market

[ladymuck]

I thought office holders had to be inside IR35?

Exactly what I was thinking

[edison]

I thought office holders had to be inside IR35?

I thought Office Holders, as defined by HRMC, had to be appointed by/to the Board of Directors? CTO doesn't necessarily mean it's a board level position, especially for a large global company as the advert suggests.

[avonleigh]

I thought Office Holders, as defined by HRMC, had to be appointed by/to the Board of Directors? CTO doesn't necessarily mean it's a board level position, especially for a large global company as the advert suggests.

A lot of the time a CTO is nothing more than a Head of Development.

[SussexSeagull]

I wouldn't go that far. But the dynamic continues to shift.
Probably like most people here, I relied solely on Jobserve for many years.
All the agencies just dumped their books of business there, and waited for the contractors to apply.

Over the last few years I'm getting an increasing number of approaches from agents on Linkedin.
Also, agents I've worked with in the past are more actively using their address books to call known quantities for roles.
Very rarely, a previous client will get in touch.

But I still use Jobserve, in spite of the fake roles and 1000+ applicants/role.

For me it's about getting my CV in as many hands as possible.

I struggle to remember the last contract I got through applying through Jobserve (or anywhere else for that matter). Everything I have had in the last few years has been agents coming to me. Sadly a lot of those agents aren't agenting anymore.

[Paracelsus]

Had a conversation earlier today with a very good contractor friend of mine.

Turns out his client was hiring for a front-end developer and received in excess of 1,100 applications, 99% of which weren't remotely qualified for the role!

How do you even think about tackling that situation?

Charge something like £5 to apply for a role. That would provide sufficient friction to deter almost all of the bots, scammers and luck-pushers (esp those in poorer countries trying to scam their way into a visa) and leave mostly genuine applicants, who shouldn't mind the small payment for a 100x increase in likelihood of a human reading their CV.

Ideally of course it shouldn't be like this, but better and cheaper tech has resulted in friction being reduced in many systems below the point of being easily exploitable e.g. mass spam/scam emails, spam phonecalls, pointless job applications, etc - where historically there was a cost/time/effort involved that limited the scope for abuse.

[quackhandle]

If the client has marked it down as outside you would think they have an iron clad contract with appropriate working practices, etc (Post from NLUK incoming) but who knows?

Someone apply for it and then we can find out.

qh

[hungry_hog]

That "CTO" role is so vague it may as well say - wanted: human being - expertise includes breathing oxygen and release of bodily fluids

[dsc]

Exactly what I was thinking

Same here, even seen this on an IR35 "test" done recently for a UK based role and I think it was an official one from HMRC. If you are important enough to have an office, you are inside (actually perm most likely) and I bet £1 that a CTO / head of tech would have an office.

[SussexSeagull]

Charge something like £5 to apply for a role. That would provide sufficient friction to deter almost all of the bots, scammers and luck-pushers (esp those in poorer countries trying to scam their way into a visa) and leave mostly genuine applicants, who shouldn't mind the small payment for a 100x increase in likelihood of a human reading their CV.

Ideally of course it shouldn't be like this, but better and cheaper tech has resulted in friction being reduced in many systems below the point of being easily exploitable e.g. mass spam/scam emails, spam phonecalls, pointless job applications, etc - where historically there was a cost/time/effort involved that limited the scope for abuse.

I think trying to charge unemployed people £5 very harsh and quite possibly illegal as it would mean an agent getting money both ends.

I went for a role the other week and got sent a link to a 20 minute on-line test that would filter out anyone who didn't know the job (it was time limited so you couldn't just Google answers). Combine that with having to confirm you are a resident or have a Visa and it could relatively easily thin down the field.

[avonleigh]

No contractor is going to pay £5 to apply for a role. I make hundreds of applications so this would cost me a lot of money. All this would do is make more people go permie.