State of the Market

[Big Blue Plymouth]

I am coming to the conclusion that for my skill set (and this may be different for others) a combination of offshoring and market saturation caused by a lot of Visas being given out a few years back for people who now have leave to remain and a lot of ex-permanent people having a go has killed the market.

It is going to take a painful adjustment to change that.

As I've posted elsewhere, I'm shocked at how much poor talent there is from that particular demographic in direct competition operating through their own ltds on comparable rates to home grown talent.

[SueEllen]

Perhaps they can see how long you've been contracting from your cv so know better by now. Thinking about it, I've had fewer fishing calls the longer I've been contracting.

The rare fishing calls I do get seem to be from new agents who seem to be trying out their speel. They maybe learning why they should avoid people who have clearly been contracting for a long time...

[PrestonChris]

I only started looking for my next contract about a month ago so prob not the best time :-( but def not much out there for Oracle Development

Seems Oracle is doing a great job of selling its off the shelf products

IT contractor index hits seven-month high :: Contractor UK

[Rabotnik]

The rare fishing calls I do get seem to be from new agents who seem to be trying out their speel. They maybe learning why they should avoid people who have clearly been contracting for a long time...

I noticed when I was looking for 3 months this year that some the calls seemed to be purely to train new recruiters. They would draw out conversations with me with a bunch of questions from a script like "What are your top 3 skills", "Who are the top 3 people you worked with previously". Just a whole lot of fluff and it always turned out there was no job on offer, so I got the feeling their managers told them to just make a bunch of calls to improve their people/telephone skills.

I even did a Skype call once with an agent (I knew it would be a waste of time, but I was benched so I thought F it) for a supposed banking job but after that she kept dragging me along saying they were waiting for budget to be approved so there was "no movement there but they would keep pushing for me"

Had another one want to do a Skype call after that but I just ignored her since I'm sure it's just training for the newbs.

[munkee]

Client I currently work for is heavily reliant on 3rd party vendors to deliver their tech. The prices of one particular company dropped by 2/3rds recently which came as a pleasant shock to my client. Apparently they had "decided to offshore their testing". Of course my client is more than happy with this and is now pushing more work their way due to price.

Lets wait and see how quality goes though..

[Whorty]

Finished current contract on Friday. Due to start new role from the 21st ... one week between which has been pretty normal over the last 8 years or so I've been contracting. Good rate too and a good role, so pretty pleased

[SussexSeagull]

Finished current contract on Friday. Due to start new role from the 21st ... one week between which has been pretty normal over the last 8 years or so I've been contracting. Good rate too and a good role, so pretty pleased

What is your area?

[LondonManc]

What is your area?

Not testing, at a guess

[ruasonid]

How are project managers finding the market at the moment? I have a contract coming up for renewal soon so need to put the feelers out.

[Bluenose]

How are project managers finding the market at the moment? I have a contract coming up for renewal soon so need to put the feelers out.

its a crapshoot at the moment because there are so many people looking. it could take days or months.