State of the Market

[sira]

Well, nothing back from that agent. Lesson learned guys. I'm too proud to take a pay cut.

It's become a race to the bottom unfortunately. Circa 85% of jobs I've been approached for or applied for - first question that is asked "How much do you want?". If you're expectations don't meet their budget, your CV is put in the bin.

What surprised me is that recently I drastically lowered my salary expectations and quite alot of firms still deemed it to be too much. And I mean; lowered it to the extent that its not too far away from what I was earning as an analyst almost 5-6 years ago.

[jayn200]

Well, nothing back from that agent. Lesson learned guys. I'm too proud to take a pay cut.

It's not a pay cut. Youre a contractor not a permie. Your pay is market rate. When market rates go up temporarily due to whatever reason you take the higher rate right?

[founder]

I've founded a skill-sharing website that is alternative to CV's, maybe its time I shared it with you guys?

[eek]

It's become a race to the bottom unfortunately. Circa 85% of jobs I've been approached for or applied for - first question that is asked "How much do you want?". If you're expectations don't meet their budget, your CV is put in the bin.

What surprised me is that recently I drastically lowered my salary expectations and quite alot of firms still deemed it to be too much. And I mean; lowered it to the extent that its not too far away from what I was earning as an analyst almost 5-6 years ago.

In the current market that may not be enough - I've just seen a job that should be paying £65k advertised at £40k and there are 50 applicants on linkedIn for it.

[sira]

In the current market that may not be enough - I've just seen a job that should be paying £65k advertised at £40k and there are 50 applicants on linkedIn for it.

Yup, I can totally believe that.. The job offer I got last week is paying what I was earning 4 years ago. Pains me to accept it, but that's the current market.

[edison]

It's become a race to the bottom unfortunately. Circa 85% of jobs I've been approached for or applied for - first question that is asked "How much do you want?". If you're expectations don't meet their budget, your CV is put in the bin.

What surprised me is that recently I drastically lowered my salary expectations and quite alot of firms still deemed it to be too much. And I mean; lowered it to the extent that its not too far away from what I was earning as an analyst almost 5-6 years ago.

I've pointed out before, there's really no such thing as a single market when it comes to IT skills.

Sure, in broad terms, there is the balance of supply vs demand and at the moment, supply greatly exceeds demand. It's no surprise that the 'market' rate for many roles has fallen significantly.

But there are still likely to be skillsets holding up much better than most like security, data science and analytics or cloud. Then there is a wide variation between sectors. Logistics and healthcare are doing very well at the moment, financial services and most of retail is not. If things settle down and eventually start to improve over the next few months, there might be some clearer longer term changes that become apparent e.g. by sector or skill set. It could be that some sectors and skillsets see a longer term decline which could be worrying.

What definitely sees to be happening is hiring managers are asking for an ever increasing shopping list of skills and experience for many roles that would be very difficult to fill in the best of times. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. The organisation I work for has recruited a lot of people recently, both perm and contract. Salaries have stayed the same and rates have not moved downwards much. But it's meant they've been able to hire better people for the money than would have been the case six months ago.

[Old Greg]

In the current market that may not be enough - I've just seen a job that should be paying £65k advertised at £40k and there are 50 applicants on linkedIn for it.

Yup, I can totally believe that.. The job offer I got last week is paying what I was earning 4 years ago. Pains me to accept it, but that's the current market.

In one way it is simple market forces to pick up labour cheap. But for permie jobs, it's very short sighted as good people who takes jobs at low salaries will leave as soon as salaries recover leaving employers with the bad employees. Market forces karma is a bitch .

Shrewd employers will pay the early 2020 market salary and then recruit the best people from the permie market..

[eek]

In one way it is simple market forces to pick up labour cheap. But for permie jobs, it's very short sighted as good people who takes jobs at low salaries will leave as soon as salaries recover leaving employers with the bad employees. Market forces karma is a bitch .

Shrewd employers will pay the early 2020 market salary and then recruit the best people from the permie market..

In reality we are going to be trying to get away with as little as possible - but we are in start up mode and it's attached to the promise that if the work is actually there it will be market rate (and beyond) asap.

Edit to add I should add that as a statement regarding bonuses so will sort that out today

[sira]

In one way it is simple market forces to pick up labour cheap. But for permie jobs, it's very short sighted as good people who takes jobs at low salaries will leave as soon as salaries recover leaving employers with the bad employees. Market forces karma is a bitch .

Shrewd employers will pay the early 2020 market salary and then recruit the best people from the permie market..

Completely agree. As soon as better/higher paying job comes up, I will be leaving pronto. Literally just taking the job to cover myself, as they don't want to pay what I'm worth. I'll just leave it off my CV (as leaving a perm job in under 1 year doesnt look good) and blame the gap on Covid.

[eek]

Completely agree. As soon as better/higher paying job comes up, I will be leaving pronto. Literally just taking the job to cover myself, as they don't want to pay what I'm worth. I'll just leave it off my CV (as leaving a perm job in under 1 year doesnt look good) and blame the gap on Covid.

surely you just make it look like another contract?