State of the Market

[BritishLad88]

I think it's far less common now to switch from contract to perm and back to contract. Partly because clients are more wise to it. I've seen it many times from hiring managers who are biased against long term contractors and would fill a perm role with a lower calibre permie as it was lower risk compared to the contractor.

I agree, tbh i was one of those who switched from contract to perm in first place - mainly due to needs and circumstances during covid. Covid years were tough. my contract finished just literally when covid lockdown started and to compile misery it was around the time IR35 rule change (i refused to go inside) and my warchest completely used up at same time to repay a hefty loan on my property. So was hard finding a new gig and the need to feed the wife meant i can't go many months without money coming in hence made the decision to pick up any perm roles i could bargain during that time.

do I regret it? 50-50. one way i dont' as i meant i still got new experiences and income but on the flip side always thinking what-if..

[northernladuk]

I agree, tbh i was one of those who switched from contract to perm in first place - mainly due to needs and circumstances during covid. Covid years were tough. my contract finished just literally when covid lockdown started and to compile misery it was around the time IR35 rule change (i refused to go inside) and my warchest completely used up at same time to repay a hefty loan on my property. So was hard finding a new gig and the need to feed the wife meant i can't go many months without money coming in hence made the decision to pick up any perm roles i could bargain during that time.

do I regret it? 50-50. one way i dont' as i meant i still got new experiences and income but on the flip side always thinking what-if..

Why did you refuse to go inside in such a difficult situation? I assume you were fighting the fight for which we thank you comrade brother....

[DrGUID]

C# dev and just been made redundant (charity sector). Donations are down and client work dried up. But really it's an identical situation to 2022's redundancy (mostly caused by lack of sales team being in the pub/golf course instead of on the phone to clients). I got a decent payoff both times though.

The jobs market seems quiet but of course it will take a while for Easter to wear off/new financial year to kick in. It's been all or nothing for the last year. I was submerged with job emails in January - now there's very little. I don't know how accurate the itjobswatch data is but I think 'Finance' is a good proxy for the general state of the market.

Whatever the market's like, salaries/rates have tumbled for a lot of skills. I'm also seeing this for C#.

I have a decent warchest to keep afloat and I'm tempted to sell everything at FTSE 8000. It kind of feels like 2001-03 all over again. Right now there's way to much dumb money in crypto/meme stocks/AI and no money doing useful stuff like drilling for oil/securing our essential supplies like food and pharmaceuticals. AI will probably cause more problems than it ever solves. Right now it's primarily flooding YouTube with low effort content.

For anyone interested in side hustles my coding YouTube channel just got monetized. I earnt $10 in my first week (lol). I'm just using as a learning exercise to learn something else. Plus if I get one of those stupid dev tests/leetcodes I can just point them to my channel/github.

[rocktronAMP]

C# dev and just been made redundant (charity sector). Donations are down and client work dried up. But really it's an identical situation to 2022's redundancy (mostly caused by lack of sales team being in the pub/golf course instead of on the phone to clients). I got a decent payoff both times though.

The jobs market seems quiet but of course it will take a while for Easter to wear off/new financial year to kick in. It's been all or nothing for the last year. I was submerged with job emails in January - now there's very little. I don't know how accurate the itjobswatch data is but I think 'Finance' is a good proxy for the general state of the market.

Whatever the market's like, salaries/rates have tumbled for a lot of skills. I'm also seeing this for C#.

I have a decent warchest to keep afloat and I'm tempted to sell everything at FTSE 8000. It kind of feels like 2001-03 all over again. Right now there's way to much dumb money in crypto/meme stocks/AI and no money doing useful stuff like drilling for oil/securing our essential supplies like food and pharmaceuticals. AI will probably cause more problems than it ever solves. Right now it's primarily flooding YouTube with low effort content.

For anyone interested in side hustles my coding YouTube channel just got monetized. I earnt $10 in my first week (lol). I'm just using as a learning exercise to learn something else. Plus if I get one of those stupid dev tests/leetcodes I can just point them to my channel/github.

This you? Michael Farley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZobVQ_J7HtI

[dsc]

Roughly two weeks of applying, around 10+ applications sent, I did skip the covering letter in all, so perhaps that's why all went in the bin? no idea, but heard from one which I was a good fit for, that it didn't work out, silence on the rest, but it was Easter, so they will probably get to checking things around August...

I've signed up to a bunch of job alerts on LI, this is both UK and EU and I get...maybe 1 new job add per day if I'm lucky. And for EU jobs, pretty much all require local languages, so that's a no-go. so much for having access to a larger job market.

Feck this tulip.

[plutocrat]

Roughly two weeks of applying, around 10+ applications sent, I did skip the covering letter in all, so perhaps that's why all went in the bin? no idea, but heard from one which I was a good fit for, that it didn't work out, silence on the rest, but it was Easter, so they will probably get to checking things around August...

I've signed up to a bunch of job alerts on LI, this is both UK and EU and I get...maybe 1 new job add per day if I'm lucky. And for EU jobs, pretty much all require local languages, so that's a no-go. so much for having access to a larger job market.

Feck this tulip.

Really would put in a covering letter if asked on permie jobs, just knock something fairly generic highlighting stuff on your CV and cut and paste the company nameand put a sentence about their sector.

[Bluenose]

Glad to know that it's not just me who thought that!

As someone based in the NW, I was kind of hoping that the high-value FS roles would diversify location-wise post-covid but generally speaking, I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that happening yet.

Most of the non-FS stuff is on Linkedin, its only the U.K legacy crap with the U.K legacy agencies that keep to Jobserve.

The boatload of FS Jobs started to migrate out of London in 2011 and then accelerated through to 2014. There's not many 'big' moves I can think of since 2014, its a small bucket.

The one, notable exception I can think of is HSBC HQ moving (back) to Birmingham once their new building was finished in 2019. That was 2,500 staff. There are probably others but I can't think of them right now.

To be honest, I think remote working has killed off London for FS looking to move completely out of London on the basis that they will just downsize.

On the other hand, people bleet on about London Markets but they are all like sheep, once one of them gets told by McKinsey to move then they could all start moving.

[northernladuk]

Really would put in a covering letter if asked on permie jobs, just knock something fairly generic highlighting stuff on your CV and cut and paste the company nameand put a sentence about their sector.

Must admit I've never done a covering letter. Let my CV do the talking but I did used to fire it off then ring the agent and get his attention directly so didn't really needed it. In my last recent search I've started adding a covering letter but nothing much more than a few paragraphs saying I meet the criteria due to my work on X client delivering Y if it is exactly the same as the role I'm applying for. Couple of paragraphs using examples directly related to the gig. Just an English version of the CV. I'd then go hunt the agent down which is harder now than it used to be. Can't say if it's made any difference but with so few gigs to apply for it's not like I don't have the time.

[WTFH]

Really would put in a covering letter if asked on permie jobs, just knock something fairly generic highlighting stuff on your CV and cut and paste the company nameand put a sentence about their sector.

I've never put in a covering letter, but I have put in phone calls before sending my CV in and after, because a lot of people just fire off an email application without putting the effort in to talk to someone.

[edison]

I always used to try and speak to the agent before sending a CV for a contract role. Now, many agents don't have their phone number on either their LinkedIn profile or on their company website. If it's a central office number, it rarely seems to get answered.

I've seen quite a few agents that have no contact details at all on their LinkedIn. It's almost like they have no interest in speaking with candidates. I can't blame them in some ways. The whole system of recruitment is broken and recruiters get large numbers of unsolicited messages daily.