State of the Market

[dogzilla]

Sounds dire. I'm fortunate my skillset and experience seem to be in demand right now. I secured another role to tide me over to March for a Swiss company. They're saving loads of money running an English speaking team because we're way cheaper than Swiss nationals who are at least 40% more expensive.

Might see more of that. There are a lot of multi-national companies running English projects. Know a few people doing similar.

Might be worth reaching out to European agencies if you can't get anything onshore.

[cwah]

I have 2 recruiters I thought were good lead and said I would be the perfect candidate. After a chat they said would contact me back.

Never happened. I already sent a first reminder. Wondering what's happening!!

[jayn200]

Sounds dire. I'm fortunate my skillset and experience seem to be in demand right now. I secured another role to tide me over to March for a Swiss company. They're saving loads of money running an English speaking team because we're way cheaper than Swiss nationals who are at least 40% more expensive.

Might see more of that. There are a lot of multi-national companies running English projects. Know a few people doing similar.

Might be worth reaching out to European agencies if you can't get anything onshore.

Was that in switzerland or uk? What day rate?

[CheeseSlice]

I've had quite a few interviews this week and last week with large companies. All of these gigs were marketed to me as "urgent" but during these interviews & the general recruitment process, there is no sense of urgency at all from companies. They simply don't give a toss.

For example, one company I'm interviewing with had two perm headcount pre-covid (for 2 different roles) but they got changed into contract gigs due to the pandemic - they said these headcount have been open since January and need to be filled urgently. I interviewed well for both roles and got through to 2nd round, and still no slots provided for either. I felt like they're not sure if they want to hire anyone at all and it wouldn't surprise me if both roles get dropped as Covid wave 2 and Brexit is starting to bite.

Slightly more bizarrely, two others were maternity cover, (12 month gigs) so they need someone in ASAP to do a handover etc., again made it through to next rounds and still no news (after 1-2 weeks. I was told only 3 candidates including myself were being interviewed, yet no noise. Maybe they told me I got through, but secretly I didn't get through

Tldr; there was a small ray of hope as of last week but the market's turned to tulip again and likely wont improve as we near winter.

If there's one ray of hope, the covid lockdown baby boom will give us plenty of maternity cover contracts in a few months time..

[CheeseSlice]

Read somewhere recently that the building industry is pushing the numbers up and that "white collar" market is dead for now without much hope for now at least.

Also, even with new jobs being advertised, I reckon most are well below pre-Covid market rates, so growth might actually mean very little :/

Here's a quick way to get a feel for the job postings
ITJobsWatch - Developer Contracts advertised in the last 3 months - comparing 2020 with the same 3 month periods in 2019 and 2018
Link

2020: 3,701
2019: 10,392
2018: 14,734

Percentage wise, the number of developer jobs compared with the size of the market hasn't changed much.
As you can see, decimated...

[sira]

If there's one ray of hope, the covid lockdown baby boom will give us plenty of maternity cover contracts in a few months time..

Excellent point

By the looks of it, the economy is so bad that companies are going to make women continue working through pregnancy just to avoid paying for contractors

[perplexed]

I have 2 recruiters I thought were good lead and said I would be the perfect candidate. After a chat they said would contact me back.

Never happened. I already sent a first reminder. Wondering what's happening!!

Clearly you scared them with your perfectness.

[oliverson]

Here's a quick way to get a feel for the job postings
ITJobsWatch - Developer Contracts advertised in the last 3 months - comparing 2020 with the same 3 month periods in 2019 and 2018
Link

2020: 3,701
2019: 10,392
2018: 14,734

Percentage wise, the number of developer jobs compared with the size of the market hasn't changed much.
As you can see, decimated...

It really is utter tulipe. You get a glimmer of hope and then **** all again.

[krytonsheep]

I have 2 recruiters I thought were good lead and said I would be the perfect candidate. After a chat they said would contact me back.

Never happened. I already sent a first reminder. Wondering what's happening!!

That's standard behaviour for agents over the past 10 years. They basically transitioned from using TCP protocol to UDP to communicate: connectionless and unreliable .

[GhostofTarbera]

Here's a quick way to get a feel for the job postings
ITJobsWatch - Developer Contracts advertised in the last 3 months - comparing 2020 with the same 3 month periods in 2019 and 2018
Link

2020: 3,701
2019: 10,392
2018: 14,734

Percentage wise, the number of developer jobs compared with the size of the market hasn't changed much.
As you can see, decimated...

Lol

Live senior it project manager roles = 2

Things are looking up


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