State of the Market

[Fraidycat]

Looking at number of jobs on the job boards, the market over the last six weeks has been down about 25% due to the normal summer holiday season, I think any pickup in September is just going to just take us back to how the market was in June.

[gables]

He took an inside role first and even that got canned!

The perm role is 6 figures (and no decimal places!)

Hmm, bolded bit does put quite a different slant on how you first worded your post ;-) Fair play to the fella, a 6 figure perm role is definitely worth considering\doing :-)

[andromedan]

Looking at number of jobs on the job boards, the market over the last six weeks has been down about 25% due to the normal summer holiday season, I think any pickup in September is just going to just take us back to how the market was in June.

I'm not sure that the market in June was that good, to begin with

[Bluenose]

Looking at number of jobs on the job boards, the market over the last six weeks has been down about 25% due to the normal summer holiday season, I think any pickup in September is just going to just take us back to how the market was in June.

I think there has been a separation in trends between jobserve and the actual market on linkedin. My burner and linked-in has been going nuts through all of August. I managed to line up six interviews, for six different roles in six working days. I took all the rate bids this time, from Lambo money to shelf-stacker rate on the basis that if I don't like the interview vibes or the project, I will walk.

I may not get a role, I may not take one but this is not a bear market anymore.

[edison]

I've noticed a lot more activity via LinkedIn than I would normally expect in August. Might be just a coincidence but opportunities that come via LinkedIn generally seem to be where the client is still in the early stages of working out what the need and often progress quite slowly.

I've got two opportunities for interim IT Director roles, one of which is M&A driven, but the investors behind the deal have decided to delay the recruitment another few weeks.

[ladymuck]

Feck me it's depressing looking for a job. Great sounding role, near perfect fit. They want to pay a tenner more a day than I'm currently on. Inside. So I'll take home about 1/3rd, maybe half what I do at the moment. It seems to me that companies aren't willing to pay the extra NI for inside roles, expecting the contractor to suck it up and pay it all just so they can keep their costs the same.

The agent did have the grace to sound embarrassed when I said that the net rate is effectively what a junior should expect to earn but the spec wants "extensive experience".

[edison]

Feck me it's depressing looking for a job. Great sounding role, near perfect fit. They want to pay a tenner more a day than I'm currently on. Inside. So I'll take home about 1/3rd, maybe half what I do at the moment. It seems to me that companies aren't willing to pay the extra NI for inside roles, expecting the contractor to suck it up and pay it all just so they can keep their costs the same.

The agent did have the grace to sound embarrassed when I said that the net rate is effectively what a junior should expect to earn but the spec wants "extensive experience".

You can see this is many job ads reflecting that it is much more of a buyer's market compared to 12-18 months ago. Perm roles are often bad for asking for an almost impossible and lengthy combination of skills - some ads I've seen are ridiculous but there are bound to be takers in this market.

[andromedan]

In my experience, the market hasn't changed now that we have entered September, though it's only been a few days. I'm interested to hear your perspective - have you noticed any differences in the market compared to the start of last month? My input is purely anecdotal, so please feel free to share your own view.

[BigDataPro]

Phew... Having been on the bench since December, finally I have landed on a 4 month outside role.

Even though I have enough experience and most sought after skillsets (at least I thought so) such as Data engineering, Azure (with multiple certifications) and AWS, nothing came my way for the past many months.

During this time, in desperation first I started applying inside role and then to low paid CivilService jobs, NHS jobs etc. In most places my CV got rejected at the initial stage itself albeit having the exact skills and experience they wanted. Probably because I didn't write a satisfying "how you meet the essential criteria?" and the "personal statement" that I have never written in my life. There's a strong possibility of ageism exists too.

I didn't make it in one civilservice role where I made to interview stage but it appears that they seem to have some standard answers for questions such as "Give me an example when you blah,blah? (supported your team, team member, helped change project direction etc)"

Market is still horrible. Ads specify almost every techskill under the sky and 80% of Jobserve ads are merely CV collecting exercise.

Hope my experience helps someone!

[JustKeepSwimming]

Phew... Having been on the bench since December, finally I have landed on a 4 month outside role.

Even though I have enough experience and most sought after skillsets (at least I thought so) such as Data engineering, Azure (with multiple certifications) and AWS, nothing came my way for the past many months.

During this time, in desperation first I started applying inside role and then to low paid CivilService jobs, NHS jobs etc. In most places my CV got rejected at the initial stage itself albeit having the exact skills and experience they wanted. Probably because I didn't write a satisfying "how you meet the essential criteria?" and the "personal statement" that I have never written in my life. There's a strong possibility of ageism exists too.

I didn't make it in one civilservice role where I made to interview stage but it appears that they seem to have some standard answers for questions such as "Give me an example when you blah,blah? (supported your team, team member, helped change project direction etc)"

Market is still horrible. Ads specify almost every techskill under the sky and 80% of Jobserve ads are merely CV collecting exercise.

Hope my experience helps someone!

The whole 'Write an essay for us' approach of public sector is absolutely crazy especially as it's been proven to discourage the best candidates. The interviews are also absurd under the guise of 'fairness'.