State of the Market

[Dorkeaux]

That's a nice bit of age discrimination...

Yes. Likely true, though not enough causality to prove.

I try hard not to give ageists ammunition.
No graduation or birth dates on my CV or Linkedin profile, no mention of the first half of my career.

The vetting the agents and clients give me is often farmed out to Morson or some other specialist firm, I doubt they even get a look at my passport.

Not a big problem so far, but it might be in the future unless I start dying my hair and have a lot of messy and expensive plastic surgery...

[SussexSeagull]

I know there are many other factors in play so to blame everything on my age would be hugely disingenuous but I haven't got a new contract since I turned fifty and was once given feedback from an interview that my views on testing were old fashioned. We used to be the wise old head in the room who had seen it and done it all before but I don't think that is a selling point anymore.

I get contractors are never going to get protection from prejudice but it is a problem now I am looking for permanent roles, especially as I am expected to work for another 15 years (and it is quite possible the retirement age could go up again before then).

[avonleigh]

Yes. Likely true, though not enough causality to prove.

I try hard not to give ageists ammunition.
No graduation or birth dates on my CV or Linkedin profile, no mention of the first half of my career.

The vetting the agents and clients give me is often farmed out to Morson or some other specialist firm, I doubt they even get a look at my passport.

Not a big problem so far, but it might be in the future unless I start dying my hair and have a lot of messy and expensive plastic surgery...

I am 55 so can relate to this. I don't even get interviews for permanent jobs. Had hundreds of rejections over the last few years. I do include my date of birth on my CV as don't see the point of leaving it out. As would probably still be rejected later.

Never been a problem for contracts though. So have to face facts that I have to try and carry on contracting for another 10 years.

[dsc]

I know there are many other factors in play so to blame everything on my age would be hugely disingenuous but I haven't got a new contract since I turned fifty and was once given feedback from an interview that my views on testing were old fashioned. We used to be the wise old head in the room who had seen it and done it all before but I don't think that is a selling point anymore.

I get contractors are never going to get protection from prejudice but it is a problem now I am looking for permanent roles, especially as I am expected to work for another 15 years (and it is quite possible the retirement age could go up again before then).

With so much new tech coming out all the time, stuff you did a few years back is old school. The assumption is probably that if you over 40/50 you will want to apply the same old tech you've used 5-10 years ago which is ancient, hence the auto chop.

[SussexSeagull]

With so much new tech coming out all the time, stuff you did a few years back is old school. The assumption is probably that if you over 40/50 you will want to apply the same old tech you've used 5-10 years ago which is ancient, hence the auto chop.

I have never had a problem adapting to new technology and it certainly isn't the preserve of the under 40s. I think the problem in what I did in test is historically you did analysis, produced some scripts then executed them until everyone was happy. This was initially done manually, although obviously involved things like interrogating SQL or sending messages to API as need be. When you had done that it might get automated. You needed to be a decent Test Analyst before anything else.

From what I can see the first thing being looked for now is a list of tools that they happen to use at that company and not how good someone is at actually testing.

I am probably turning into an old man screaming at clouds but that isn't progress. It's great that automating tests is getting easier and more widespread but there does need to a process leading up to that stage. These things go in cycles and I am sure it will move on again but probably too late for me.

[dsc]

[...]From what I can see the first thing being looked for now is a list of tools that they happen to use at that company and not how good someone is at actually testing.[...]

And here lies the problem, I've worked with some pretty dim people who had positions mostly because they knew an XYZ product but overall were terrible engineers.

As for age and the assumption that older people won't know how to work / will have problems learning new tech...that in itself is a perfect example of agism. But as you say, very often there's not much you can do about it.

[TheDude]

You'd think no one would care about a university degree from almost 35 years ago but that isn't true.

A few years ago I did an interim Head of IT role at a large FTSE100 company. I was bemused to get a call from HR asking if I had my degree certificate as they had been quoted £60 by the uni for an official transcript.

I recently applied for a FTC role with one of the biggest accountancy firms. It was exactly like applying for a perm role including having your CV parsed into a standard format for Workday which invariably doesn't work and you have to enter most of the info manually. Including my degree details with dates.

Unfortunately by having to put in my degree date, it exposed my age as over 55 and despite having done the exact same role before multiple times as a contractor including in this sector, I got an automated rejection a few hours later.

They don't care about your degree.

They care that you are telling the truth and that is why they check.

[SchumiStars]

Anyone having any success?

Not a single agent has contacted me via email or phone. The jobs listed on LI, don't seem to go anywhere at all.

Why would a company pay a contractor to learn new tech when they can hire a grad and becomes a perk of the job?

I personally love new technology and love learning competence. In the days of getting multiple offers of work, I would always go for the one were I could learn the most. Most of these would often pay less but I was adding to the toolbox.

The posters above hoping for another 10yrs contracting, the market has changed. I suspect, it maybe prudent finding a permi gig for 10yrs.

By the time and with a big if, the market does get going again, the skillset has changed. There will also be a fresh range of contractors who will have the desired skills.

Saying that however, I have a friend who is on an outside contract doing sql2005.

[dsc]

Anyone having any success?

Not a single agent has contacted me via email or phone. The jobs listed on LI, don't seem to go anywhere at all.

Why would a company pay a contractor to learn new tech when they can hire a grad and becomes a perk of the job?

I personally love new technology and love learning competence. In the days of getting multiple offers of work, I would always go for the one were I could learn the most. Most of these would often pay less but I was adding to the toolbox.

The posters above hoping for another 10yrs contracting, the market has changed. I suspect, it maybe prudent finding a permi gig for 10yrs.

By the time and with a big if, the market does get going again, the skillset has changed. There will also be a fresh range of contractors who will have the desired skills.

Saying that however, I have a friend who is on an outside contract doing sql2005.

I keep getting job ads for oil&gas work which is pretty crazy, apart from this, not much in my field (green energy). There's plenty of perm jobs advertised on LI, just not sure how real they are.

As for learning on the job, I feel like this was never an option for contractors, so the fact you've landed jobs like this means you were lucky imho. Why would anyone take on a contractor to learn new tech, it's literally the most expensive option there is. Unless the client knows you personally and knows you are a superb engineer and the skill required is for some smaller job in addition to something you already know and use, then yeah it might happen, but those scenarios are few and far between.

With new tech coming out constantly you really have to be on top of your game to land jobs these days, stuff you've used last year can be old by now or there's 10 other things you need to know in additional to that skill to make it work. In software engineering loads of people have their on git repo to show off work or have a website with a portfolio of work. Without that I feel like you simply do stand out in any way, thus your cv goes in the bin / gets a pass.

[oliverson]

Anyone having any success?

Not a single agent has contacted me via email or phone. The jobs listed on LI, don't seem to go anywhere at all.

Why would a company pay a contractor to learn new tech when they can hire a grad and becomes a perk of the job?

I personally love new technology and love learning competence. In the days of getting multiple offers of work, I would always go for the one were I could learn the most. Most of these would often pay less but I was adding to the toolbox.

The posters above hoping for another 10yrs contracting, the market has changed. I suspect, it maybe prudent finding a permi gig for 10yrs.

By the time and with a big if, the market does get going again, the skillset has changed. There will also be a fresh range of contractors who will have the desired skills.

Saying that however, I have a friend who is on an outside contract doing sql2005.

I've had a couple today but both were inside, and even at £ 900+ I'm just not interested.

There is an outside one that is of interest though. Ticks all the boxes - rate, level of 'remoteness', outside, great tech. Sod's law the hiring manager is on the sick.

Another one down London but fully remote if that's what you want (I do) and again ticks all the boxes, that I'm keeping an eye on.

Despite all this, I do feel a sense of frustration that the phone isn't ringing off the hook like it used to, and the level of inside roles. But I do know something suitable will come along, it always does. Fingers crossed it's sooner rather than later.

Forgot to mention, I applied for a role on JobServe and instead of it being a black hole, into which my profile has been sent, somebody, a real person, actually telephoned me. A 'REAL CALL'. Just like it used to be. There is hope!!