State of the Market

[CheeseSlice]

Part of me blames the market, but another part blames my CV.

Its definitely the market. Most likely your CV is absolutely fine. Poor market conditions poison the mind with all kinds of paranoia.
This is why all of the CV writing 'experts' pop up and make a killing during hard times.

[uk contractor]

The market for me is deader than corduroy bell-bottoms. It's a bit frustrating because there seem to be alot of ads out there between Jobserve and Linkedin, but I'm not seeing any responses from my applications except for the occasional "no thanks" automated email.

For me this is unusual .. I've always been able to land a contract within 2 weeks of looking. I'm looking at permie now, of course, but no bites. Part of me blames the market, but another part blames my CV. For one, I'm over 50. during that time, I've developed database engine components for a well-known software vendor, and I also developed an operating system for a satellite communications company. I also developed a compiler for a language used to control pill dispensing robots for pharma. So my expertise is in C, Rust, Golang, SQL, etc.

At this point, I get the feeling that either there are no jobs that require those skills or that they look at my CV and figure I'm going to bail on them the minute something better comes along, which isn't necessarily true. I'm not getting enough feedback to know what the issues are, really so I can only speculate.

There are very few genuine jobs around! Most ads are not genuine! they are fake or roles that are no longer live. Once you understand that its supply & demand 101. Demand is at an alltime low & supply is the exact opposite & then some thanks to all the work visa requiring IT workers....!

[LadyPenelope]

Just landed a 4 month contract. It was the only one I interviewed for, and I only received two agency calls during the 6 weeks I was looking. Decent role with decent rate, remote for the duration. I know I've been very lucky indeed.

I have seen it pick up, but weirdly more contracts have been advertised on linked in feed than on Jobserve. This one was from uploading my cv onto Jobsite.

(I quit a perm job after 6 months in June as it was unbearable. Just reminded me why I liked being a contractor.)

[ContractorHardman]

Its definitely the market. Most likely your CV is absolutely fine. Poor market conditions poison the mind with all kinds of paranoia.
This is why all of the CV writing 'experts' pop up and make a killing during hard times.

You sound like a man telling his wife that she doesn't look fat and its the shops fault for making it smaller

I finished my contract to with one client and joining another on Monday.

My new contract is based overseas and I am working remotely until the time comes when I need to go in to the office then I will move. I was lucky and got approached on LinkedIn.

I have also been interviewing for a FTC however I think they will baulk when they see my salary expectations is well over 6 figures.

The job overseas is paying me my full rate which is top rate for a BA in London. Even with their tax system it still works out the same as the UK. There are contracts out there however this one came out of the blue. I know I am extremely lucky and I am also grateful.

I wish everyone the best of luck and maybe gives a few of you that its not all doom and gloom

[nomadd]

.. I read somewhere it is the worst job market in a generation.

Probably ContractorUK.

[hairymouse]

So my expertise is in C, Rust, Golang, SQL, etc.

According to this article, you've got the most in demand skills in the whole job market. Golang should be earning you £115 per year.Top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK
I spent 6 months looking for just about any job as a SQL developer and it sure didn't feel like the most in demand skill then.

[BigDataPro]

According to this article, you've got the most in demand skills in the whole job market. Golang should be earning you £115 per year.Top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK
I spent 6 months looking for just about any job as a SQL developer and it sure didn't feel like the most in demand skill then.

These sort of demand skill lists are often misleading. For e.g. if we take javascript - then there is plethora of related skills needed such as JS Frameworks (React, Angular, VueJS etc), JS build tools, JS testing tools etc. If we take SQL what they mean is that we need to be able to work in various standard relational databases to NoSQL databases that use subset of SQL.

I believe they are merely crawling the job posts and then counting the skills mentioned there. In reality, it has no value.

[Katalyst]

According to this article, you've got the most in demand skills in the whole job market. Golang should be earning you £115 per year.Top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK
I spent 6 months looking for just about any job as a SQL developer and it sure didn't feel like the most in demand skill then.

That's just it .. there are a bunch of ads for Golang jobs, but they seem to be wonky micro-services startups paying 60K a year max. The real high paying advertised jobs seem to be primarily Java and Python (the latter which I barely would consider a language) for banking. Rust jobs seem all to be Cryptocurrency startups. SQL is in high demand, but recruiters can't seem to tell the difference between Azure and SQL. So while I have over 20 years of solid SQL experience, they consider me a newbie because I only have 2 years of experience in Azure SQL, which is fundamentally the exact same thing.

I'm not complaining, since goofy jobs have always been around. I'm just surprised at the lack of "real" development work out there.

[GhostofTarbera]

That's just it .. there are a bunch of ads for Golang jobs, but they seem to be wonky micro-services startups paying 60K a year max. The real high paying advertised jobs seem to be primarily Java and Python (the latter which I barely would consider a language) for banking. Rust jobs seem all to be Cryptocurrency startups. SQL is in high demand, but recruiters can't seem to tell the difference between Azure and SQL. So while I have over 20 years of solid SQL experience, they consider me a newbie because I only have 2 years of experience in Azure SQL, which is fundamentally the exact same thing.

I'm not complaining, since goofy jobs have always been around. I'm just surprised at the lack of "real" development work out there.

A 10 second update to your CV soon fixes this issue


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

[Katalyst]

A 10 second update to your CV soon fixes this issue


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

True, if you can't beat 'em then may as well join them ..