State of the Market

[SussexSeagull]

A reminder that this is a "State of the Market" thread and not "The poor state of Oliverson's life".

Market has picked up in the last two months and have been received more calls than I know what to do with.

I am out the game now but looking on here and on LinkedIn I think your experience is fairly atypical of the current contract market.

[NotAllThere]

A reminder that this is a "State of the Market" thread and not "The poor state of Oliverson's life".

Market has picked up in the last two months and have been received more calls than I know what to do with.

It's also not "State of the Economy" really! Although the two are obviously related. Anyway, off topic posts removed.

[agentzero]

I am out the game now but looking on here and on LinkedIn I think your experience is fairly atypical of the current contract market.

Fair comment. Word of mouth seems the way of it now. I'm not smug with this arrangement, as it pushes out good contractors from finding work. It's as if the impenetrable world of insurance is now across most sectors and recommendations are one of the few ways to get work. I'm not working full time on any single contract and like it this way, but scope creep is happening more often as clients try to get many more hours than they say they are willing to pay for. It's a ruse to exploit desperate contractors. I've managed to stop two clients expecting full time office hours for what certainly is part time 2 days a week project.

[SussexSeagull]

Fair comment. Word of mouth seems the way of it now. I'm not smug with this arrangement, as it pushes out good contractors from finding work. It's as if the impenetrable world of insurance is now across most sectors and recommendations are one of the few ways to get work. I'm not working full time on any single contract and like it this way, but scope creep is happening more often as clients try to get many more hours than they say they are willing to pay for. It's a ruse to exploit desperate contractors. I've managed to stop two clients expecting full time office hours for what certainly is part time 2 days a week project.

You do hear of people who are in a similar position to you and are doing ok or indeed quite well. I agree about word of mouth but it doesn't help if they haven't got any work going.

Problem is if the eco-system of contracting gets dismantled it will reach a point, or indeed might have already, where there is a terminal decline and it can't scale back up if the market improves and can't be a sizeable industry again.

Good luck to you though.

[SchumiStars]

Had a nice chat with a recruiter this morning. Everyone is in agreement, that this is the worst job market in decades.

Talked to him about why the banks were not hiring and it seems they can avoid hiring contractors (IR35) by just outsourcing the work to consultancies on the same rate but outside IR35.

Makes sense, why would they risk getting fined. Does look like IR35 is one of the big reasons why contracting is a finished market.

[courtg9000]

The every so often call bomb for me.
2 calls this morning both for the same thing.
Tech I have not touched in 13 years.
Punter is "local".
Definitely Inside though the conversations didn't get that far.
Rate - crap.
Obviously there is an ancient CV kicking around somewhere on the internet.

[fatJock]

Talked to him about why the banks were not hiring and it seems they can avoid hiring contractors (IR35) by just outsourcing the work to consultancies on the same rate but outside IR35.

But haven't consultancies historically backfilled with contractors?

[SchumiStars]

But haven't consultancies historically backfilled with contractors?

Not the ones from India/off-shore. They normally have a queue of people wanting to work for peanuts and a visa in my experience.

The only problem with that is, when they get their visas they become a contractor. So now we have even more competition from the consultancies and new contractors.

Hence why there is fewer jobs, contracts and more people available. And this of course causes the rates to drop. A horrible cycle.

This will only end when demand out strips supply. We need a tech revolution, a market distributor or something that will require enterprises to force a massive tech change.