State of the Market

[SussexSeagull]

From where I am sitting it is terrible out there. There was a brief bump once people got organised post-New Year but there is nothing out there at the moment. I suspect there will be another bump post budgets for next year being known but little pockets of activity broken up by months of silence is no basis for a contracting career.

[edison]

There are days I think I must be a market of one. I've never been so busy and can rarely recall another time when I've had so many agents and recruiters call me.

Conversely, a few years back when everyone on here seemed to be filling their boots I spent ages on the bench - twice.

Sometimes it feels like there's no logic to this game.

[Bluenose]

There are days I think I must be a market of one. I've never been so busy and can rarely recall another time when I've had so many agents and recruiters call me.

My burner phone is going off about six times a day (i just checked the call logs) but I know why, there's no real work out there for many of them. Not many of them contact me on linked in or by email which tells me that the calls are all duds and its agents fishing or, trying to keep the cold call KPI stats above water.

[SueEllen]

My burner phone is going off about six times a day (i just checked the call logs) but I know why, there's no real work out there for many of them. Not many of them contact me on linked in or by email which tells me that the calls are all duds and its agents fishing or, trying to keep the cold call KPI stats above water.

Not necessarily. One guy I've spoken to before said he would contact me again after my contract had finished - I was extended. The other call I got yesterday was fishing. I got fed up and just put the phone down.

[SussexSeagull]

For me random calls from agents seem to have been replaced with approaches through LinkedIn. Not to say I haven't got work though that channel but equally a lot of agents just seem to want to talk without any role on offer.

[SueEllen]

Oh and the first agent did later send me an email about a contract but the timeline is wrong......

[brightondeveloper]

I’ve been contracting for 13 years and I’ve never seen it this bad.

does anyone think there’ll be a recovery or is this it now?

[Fraidycat]

I’ve been contracting for 13 years and I’ve never seen it this bad.

does anyone think there’ll be a recovery or is this it now?

Is it worse now than 2020 during the lockdowns? I was in contract back then so dont know how bad it got, i remember JobServe dried up quite bad, 5000 postings or something really low like that. But last week there were over 50,000 postings on jobserve.

If things really are bad now, then my guess is it could stay this bad until they start cutting interest rates, when that is, is anyones guess. Could be this year, next year or the year after. But let us hope it is sooner rather than later.

[SussexSeagull]

Is it worse now than 2020 during the lockdowns? I was in contract back then so dont know how bad it got, i remember JobServe dried up quite bad, 5000 postings or something really low like that. But last week there were over 50,000 postings on jobserve.

If things really are bad now, then my guess is it could stay this bad until they start cutting interest rates, when that is, is anyones guess. Could be this year, next year or the year after. But let us hope it is sooner rather than later.

I found that when lockdown started recruitment practically stopped but it did recover quite quickly. I have been out since late October and apart from a brief period of activity at the end of January it has been dead, to the point I am looking at permanent jobs.

My suspicion is companies are scared to invest in projects at the moment. The only upside is the work isn't going anywhere and will probably appear at some stage.

[eek]

Something has definitely changed - last time I looked at Jobserve my speciality had 150+ jobs a week now it's 60..