State of the Market

[AndrewK]

Just pulling your leg. We've had so many posts with reasons why the market is quiet. Xmas, holidays, year end, leaves on the track, there is an R at the end of the month etc. It's such a generalisation it's difficult to quantify and matters not. If you are on the bench you keep applying, if you are not you keep invoicing.

Also just saying the contractor market is a bit general. That's a lot of skills in the same boat. If you look at ITjobswatch you can see two differences. Remember though its a scraper so it could just be agents have sod all to do so hit the fake jobs harder but...

If you look at PMs there seems to be a bit of a spike early year.
Project Management Contracts, Contractor Rates for Project Management Skills

But if you look at developers there is a bit of spike 3/4 year in
Developer IT Contracts, Contractor Rates for a Developer

but many others have no discernible seasonal change.

So who knows. Just not a fan of market is dead because of schools, budgets, xmas type argument. Could just be me but in 8 years of contracting I've gotten 3 of them in December starting on 4th Jan so wouldn't let these things worry.

Not sure how reliable is itjobswatch as a metric. The only thing it does - aggregates adverts. Advertising patterns can change, their algorithm can change, hiring patterns as well.
From what I see London Finance is every year worse. As example Barclays announced Furlough a week ago. Nothing new you would say, but this time it is 15 working days in next 3 months.

[uk contractor]

I'm not convinced by this argument and haven't seen it yet. You could imagine it would be highly attractive to do but many places still have rate cards and don't pick contractors purely on cost. Could be just my experience but I haven't seen this yet.


Zero hours is a permie term so would be wrong to directly apply to what we so. That said we already work on a T&M basis so you could say we already are. Just a different language. We've already got two running threads on contractors that got binned with no pay because the budget/project evaporated.

Clients aren't stupid enough to start messing contractors around and making them miss odd days here and there. It's just a really poor model to use and wouldn't benefit them in the long run. Remember we do the same when we tell clients we aren't available when we go on holiday etc.

Clients are stupid enough IMO end of!!

I can only talk about the London financial services market and that is changing rapidly. I have come across so many contractors recently who are getting a fraction of what the market rate is as they come from EU or India & are exploited by their agency & the end client rate wise.

This is bound to have an effect if hiring managers want cheap staff from outside the UK...

[northernladuk]

Clients are stupid enough IMO end of!!

I can only talk about the London financial services market and that is changing rapidly. I have come across so many contractors recently who are getting a fraction of what the market rate is as they come from EU or India & are exploited by their agency & the end client rate wise.

This is bound to have an effect if hiring managers want cheap staff from outside the UK...

If you have such narrow experience surely casting generalisations across the whole market isn't going to work very well?

[northernladuk]

Not sure how reliable is itjobswatch as a metric. The only thing it does - aggregates adverts. Advertising patterns can change, their algorithm can change, hiring patterns as well.
From what I see London Finance is every year worse. As example Barclays announced Furlough a week ago. Nothing new you would say, but this time it is 15 working days in next 3 months.

Absolutely. Might, and that's a bit might, be OK just tinpot seasonal trends over a number of years but totally agree the figures on there should be taken with a large dose of salt.

[MrMarkyMark]

If you have such narrow experience surely casting generalisations across the whole market isn't going to work very well?

Funny........I have been in finance for many years.
Yes, it is tricky out there, better to use your network to find contracts in finance, currently.
Certainly not experiencing any problems with getting good rates either.

My experience certainly does not match up with uk contractors.
As for pure Zero hours IT contracts, I don't see that going anywhere at all.

[LondonManc]

Clients are stupid enough IMO end of!!

I can only talk about the London financial services market and that is changing rapidly. I have come across so many contractors recently who are getting a fraction of what the market rate is as they come from EU or India & are exploited by their agency & the end client rate wise.

This is bound to have an effect if hiring managers want cheap staff from outside the UK...

You say exploited, I say not good enough for full rate.

[MrMarkyMark]

You say exploited, I say not good enough for full rate.

Also, not experienced enough to negotiate a good rate

[quackhandle]

My contracts have started all over the place. I think May is the only time I've never started a new contract.

Waiting for backup to complete so I had a look at this for all my years of gigging. I've started in all months bar November for some reason.

Have started five in June and four in October. Not sure what can be deduced from that. Have learnt that being in the right place at the right time is critical.

qh

[northernladuk]

Waiting for backup to complete so I had a look at this for all my years of gigging. I've started in all months bar November for some reason.

Them tapes don't change themselves. Busy busy.

[quackhandle]

Them tapes don't change themselves. Busy busy.

Tapes? All Fusion IO / SSD Hybrids here Grandad.

qh