State of the Market

[Rabotnik]

If you are thinking of leaving, or just coming up to the end of the contract and you might not be getting a renewal, then it's not about qualms - you should be out looking for new work. I normally start about 6 weeks before the end of a contract. Others on here might be 2-4 weeks.

There's a BIG difference between looking for work and, as you put it "terminating a contract any time you feel like taking another contract"

Ah I see what you mean, actually I would have normally started looking before I left like I did last time, but this time I wanted a bit of a break so I only started looking once I left. I just didn't think it would end up taking this long to land something. Think I'll avoid taking any more "breaks" between contracts if I can avoid it in future!

I'm in a worse position. I've actually got to the end of my contract. Right now I don't have one but I know they expect me in on Monday. The agent said he'd got something but I've not seen it.

The point is I have a mind to walk. I've got a project that is clearly loony but I'm the junior of three PMs messing about on this and the other two simply don't understand IT. I know they would get upset if I left. They got most upset when my predecessor left (because they'd delayed his renewal to the very last second and he'd gone and got something else in the meantime) but I just think it is scummy to walk out early. I agree it is illogical.

My brother seems to encounter that a lot, agent/client being uncertain about renewals and it's all up in the air. I've been lucky so far in that both places I've contracted at (NHS then private) have been happy to just keep renewing me and the managers have been the friendly type.

[uk contractor]

Yup, absolutely dead for me . I'm a SQL Business Intelligence dev, and I actually left a contract at the end of March since I was bored there and I didn't want to renew for x months and then just terminate the contract after a month once I found another gig (what a nice guy). Thought I would walk into another one like previously (had a week between contracts previously). Turns out I've really shot myself in the foot - been benched for nearly 2 months now!

Would not worry about that timespan at all employers are more understanding now they know how saturated the market is so its not uncommon to be 1year between contracts! Several agents told me 6 months is the average gap some are even longer but still managed to get work its all about how strong a candidate you are some hiring managers actually want candidates who have not worked recently as they know they are hungrier motivation wise & will not have any silly holidays booked mid project!

[northernladuk]

Would not worry about that timespan at all employers are more understanding now they know how saturated the market is so its not uncommon to be 1year between contracts! Several agents told me 6 months is the average gap some are even longer but still managed to get work its all about how strong a candidate you are some hiring managers actually want candidates who have not worked recently as they know they are hungrier motivation wise & will not have any silly holidays booked mid project!

Have you ever tried sounding like a contractor. How many time have you said employers in this thread?
And I don't believe any of that. Average gap is 6 months? Do me a favour.

[SussexSeagull]

Have you ever tried sounding like a contractor. How many time have you said employers in this thread?
And I don't believe any of that. Average gap is 6 months? Do me a favour.

I suppose they are employers, just not his employer!

[northernladuk]

I suppose they are employers, just not his employer!

Correct but he makes multiple other incorrect referencea so clearly doesn't uderstand his relationship with his client.

[LadyPenelope]

Agree extremely bad market worse than 2008, I can say this because of these:

1 Earlier agency used to call even if job ad was fake just to have normal fishing chat- Hardly getting call from agent.market is full of promising cvs.
2 I managed to secure an interview by calling agent twice to request him to look at my cv. He said he received more than 70 cvs for BA role- he ll send only 3 cvs.
3 one agent said my cv is not promising as I had previous 2 contract less than a year ( 8 months and 9 months) as many guys with more than 2 years of recent contracts are in market.

My area of work IT BA in banking.
Resource solution is another reason why job market appears bad as they usually don't call before submitting cv. Since All jobs of a company pass thru the same RS guy, he tends to ignore cv of person who has failed to clear interview earlier.

This is what I think.Market is really bad.

I'm a BA (in digital media/ecomm mostly). I've only just started looking but there doesn't seem to be a lot out there at the moment. I'm hoping things pick up after the referendum. Would like a month off tbh. I've only had 6 months out during the height f the recession, you know, back when there were about 2 pages of ads on Jobserve for BA's.

Last time I was looking for work ( a year or so ago) one of the agents told me she would receive 200 cvs but very few good candidates and a lot of chancers - probably as it's so easy and quick to send a cv and costs nothing.

I do remember times when you didn't need experience in the same industry, it was 'interview tomorrow' followed by an offer phone call on the way home and start ASAP!

[eek]

I'm a BA (in digital media/ecomm mostly). I've only just started looking but there doesn't seem to be a lot out there at the moment. I'm hoping things pick up after the referendum. Would like a month off tbh. I've only had 6 months out during the height f the recession, you know, back when there were about 2 pages of ads on Jobserve for BA's.

Last time I was looking for work ( a year or so ago) one of the agents told me she would receive 200 cvs but very few good candidates and a lot of chancers - probably as it's so easy and quick to send a cv and costs nothing.

I do remember times when you didn't need experience in the same industry, it was 'interview tomorrow' followed by an offer phone call on the way home and start ASAP!

You mean those days have gone for certain skillsets.... Though to be honest you do need to specialize to get work, the risk is that the market for a specialist skillset may just disappear...

[theroyale]

Yup, absolutely dead for me . I'm a SQL Business Intelligence dev, and I actually left a contract at the end of March since I was bored there and I didn't want to renew for x months and then just terminate the contract after a month once I found another gig (what a nice guy). Thought I would walk into another one like previously (had a week between contracts previously). Turns out I've really shot myself in the foot - been benched for nearly 2 months now!

Interesting. SQL BI dev here as well.

I'm on my way out of a contract so have just started looking. Seem to be enough jobs on jobserve but (is this a trend across the board?) far fewer in the 500+ range, with most in the 350-450 range.

[Boo]

...Average gap is 6 months? Do me a favour.

Totally plausible in the Embedded arena anyway. DAMHIKT. Intel have just signalled the incipient arrival of another 12,000 odd bright young things to further drive prices down and "resting periods" up...

Boo

[LadyPenelope]

You mean those days have gone for certain skillsets.... Though to be honest you do need to specialize to get work, the risk is that the market for a specialist skillset may just disappear...

True - there used to be lots of well paid telecoms roles, then they disappeared. Then a phase when all the publishers went digital a few years ago - lots of work for BA's. This has mostly been achieved now, by the looks of it.

Then it was ecommerce/shopping sites and a bit of finance. Judging by the proliference of ecomm consultancy jobs it looks as though they are picking up a lot of this work. Still, it's very early days - have only been looking for a week.

Despite how specialised some of the ads are, it's unlikely that there are dozens of BA's sitting at home who just specialise in an area which generally has few vacancies - you'd starve - e.g. HR specialists, for example (like an ad I saw yesterday).

No point in taking any wooden nickels so need to wait for something decent to come up. This can be quite tangientally related. I've gone for contracts where the exact same thing is wanted and not got it, then landed one in an entirely different industry (last year - went to retail from telecoms), and also gone from banking to news media.

I don't cover investment baking but I normally have to wade through pages of investment banking jobs to find my sort of stuff - this seems to have stopped recently. Maybe the markets have the jitters because of Brexit.