State of the Market

[JoJoGabor]

Anyone else finding it very quiet out there? This is the quietest I remember it for the last 6 years. I finished my last contract at the end of April and now going back to an old client, but if that work wasn't there I'd be struggling to get a sniff of anything. Feels like some lean times are on the horizon.

I'm in Infrastructure/Cloud for what it's worth.

[dx4100]

Anyone else finding it very quiet out there? This is the quietest I remember it for the last 6 years. I finished my last contract at the end of April and now going back to an old client, but if that work wasn't there I'd be struggling to get a sniff of anything. Feels like some lean times are on the horizon.

I'm in Infrastructure/Cloud for what it's worth.

In contract but I am getting healthy amount of calls.... That I keep ignoring...

[SlipTheJab]

In contract but I am getting healthy amount of calls.... That I keep ignoring...

Yeah I know PPI and 'We understand you may be been in a car accident that wasn't your fault'!

[VillageContractor]

In a contract but jobserve has double the amount of roles that it normally has with pretty good rates for my line of work

[eek]

In contract but I am getting healthy amount of calls.... That I keep ignoring...

+1. Have 3 agencies continually trying to get me to leave and fix other projects they know about. I'm happy to say no as this is too cushy...

[theroyale]

In a contract but jobserve has double the amount of roles that it normally has with pretty good rates for my line of work

I'm finding the 'double of amount of roles' in my line of work as well. But rates are dropping. Not seeing those 550-650 ones very much at all. 350-450 is far more common these days it seems.

But the roles are still there (it seems!).

[VillageContractor]

I'm finding the 'double of amount of roles' in my line of work as well. But rates are dropping. Not seeing those 550-650 ones very much at all. 350-450 is far more common these days it seems.

But the roles are still there (it seems!).

The top end in my market has risen but there are still clients trying to do it on the cheap for £300-400

[JohnJizzle]

The top end in my market has risen but there are still clients trying to do it on the cheap for £300-400

I do SQL and 3-400 is about average for similar roles. London usually does £50ish more

[Kprad35]

Anyone else finding it very quiet out there? This is the quietest I remember it for the last 6 years. I finished my last contract at the end of April and now going back to an old client, but if that work wasn't there I'd be struggling to get a sniff of anything. Feels like some lean times are on the horizon.

I'm in Infrastructure/Cloud for what it's worth.

Agree extremely bad market worse than 2008, I can say this because of these:

1 Earlier agency used to call even if job ad was fake just to have normal fishing chat- Hardly getting call from agent.market is full of promising cvs.
2 I managed to secure an interview by calling agent twice to request him to look at my cv. He said he received more than 70 cvs for BA role- he ll send only 3 cvs.
3 one agent said my cv is not promising as I had previous 2 contract less than a year ( 8 months and 9 months) as many guys with more than 2 years of recent contracts are in market.

My area of work IT BA in banking.
Resource solution is another reason why job market appears bad as they usually don't call before submitting cv. Since All jobs of a company pass thru the same RS guy, he tends to ignore cv of person who has failed to clear interview earlier.

This is what I think.Market is really bad.

[ShandyDrinker]

Agree extremely bad market worse than 2008, I can say this because of these:

1 Earlier agency used to call even if job ad was fake just to have normal fishing chat- Hardly getting call from agent.market is full of promising cvs.
2 I managed to secure an interview by calling agent twice to request him to look at my cv. He said he received more than 70 cvs for BA role- he ll send only 3 cvs.
3 one agent said my cv is not promising as I had previous 2 contract less than a year ( 8 months and 9 months) as many guys with more than 2 years of recent contracts are in market.

My area of work IT BA in banking.
Resource solution is another reason why job market appears bad as they usually don't call before submitting cv. Since All jobs of a company pass thru the same RS guy, he tends to ignore cv of person who has failed to clear interview earlier.

This is what I think.Market is really bad.

Unfortunately I found it as you are finding it now although I've been lucky and been offered a role and hope everything else falls into place.

My experience has been pretty much as you've said, particularly with the areas highlighted in bold. I've been contracting since 2008 and don't remember it being as tough back then as it is now.

Banking is more challenging to get break into and stay that at any point in recent times. Unfortunately if you've got a CV that looks tainted in any way, you'll either have to fix that (and I don't mean massage your CV), get lucky (rate may play a part here) or start looking elsewhere.

If you really want to stay in banking you're either going to have to create longevity on your CV the hard way by getting a contract and sticking with it hence you'll have to be more selective with your next contract to ensure there is longevity and it's a place you'd like to stay for a year or more. This may require a stint outside of banking to ensure that longevity. Even with the longevity, you may then have the wrong type of experience...

I'm hoping that the market we're currently experiencing is a blip due to the referendum but unfortunately I believe it is symptomatic of a longer term trend which has been discussed on a number of threads on here in the past.

Part of what we do as contractors is to spot these trends and adjust our approach as and when is necessary. If banking is a dead horse... don't flog it.