BA Market

[Ilu]

Hello forum,

Anyone with a view on the current market for Business Analysts? I've been on the bench now for two months, jobserved to death, yet no joy.Any advise on what i need to do to improve my prospects will be very appreciated.

[Svalbaard]

A few options...

1. Keep on with the job searches - set up email alerts so the jobs also come to you.
2. Diversify - what other roles could you do using your analyst skills?
3. Tailor your CV to these other roles.
4. Use your time on the bench to learn new work skills.
5. Enjoy your time off.

[NickNick]

Seemed OK to me at the end of last year / beginning of this one, which is when I picked up my current gig. I guess it depends on where you want to travel to.

My job website of choice lists 610 current BA jobs this month and 250 in the last 7 days. Of course some may not be real, but still.

[Jubber]

Things are very different now and IMHO will be for some time and we all have to accept that.

I'm not a BA, but in my field my phone would ring regularly with work opportunities. This has now stopped. I spoke to an agent I've known for a long time the other day (I sort of trust him - but only as much as one could trust an agent) and he said anything he puts on Jobserve he has 100 plus applications. He now rarely puts anything up and if he does, he now waits for candidates to contact him. He has a huge pot of available contractors on his books already.

I suggest you get your CV to as many agencies as possible - regardless whether they have a job or not. If you do apply for anything online call the agent immediately. As already suggested - enjoy the time off.

[sal626]

I'm a BA, decided to look for another contract last Nov as I wasn't happy where I was. Took about 2 months to get a new contract - but I was being picky. What I was finding is that the jobs are there but the number of applications has increased tenfold.....in the vast majority of jobs I was applying to, my CV wasn't even getting in front of the agents.

What happends in most medium to large agencies, is that they have support staff, junior agents who make a first pass at the CVs and then pass the potential candidates to the agent who actually decides who to put forward. Or, even worse, they feed your CV into some software which basically displays your CV to agent searches, depending on keywords - I used to work for a large recruitment agency in thier IT dept (or what they called an IT dept), so I speak from experience...

So my first recommendation is before you even apply online, call the agent - sound out the role and sell yourself!! Your first challenge is getting an interview, and you got to convince the agent that if he puts you forward for an interview, you will ace the interview...at the end of the day, the agent just wants to earn his fees and will put forward candidates that he thinks will get the role.

Also, if you see a job spec that contains some elements that you do not have experience in, still worth calling the agent - not all items on a job spec are a "must have".

And very important, as suggested above, tailor CV to job spec.....cant stress how important this is....

Consider a longer commute, and if you have downtime now, see what skills are in demand and get a book and learn it......UML and DSDM seem popular right now. Doesn't matter if you dont know it inside out, most at client site wont either....

good luck....

[bullseye]

I'm a 'BA on bench' as well.


I'm out of contract from 2 weeks today and have had one interview which I messed up properly and have got no interviews/calls after that.

Things are not as busy as they were before but not really quiet, hopefully things would improve as move towards march/april

[Ilu]

Seemed OK to me at the end of last year / beginning of this one, which is when I picked up my current gig. I guess it depends on where you want to travel to.

My job website of choice lists 610 current BA jobs this month and 250 in the last 7 days. Of course some may not be real, but still.

Thanks NickNick.

Do you mind me asking you which website this is ?

[Ilu]

I'm a BA, decided to look for another contract last Nov as I wasn't happy where I was. Took about 2 months to get a new contract - but I was being picky. What I was finding is that the jobs are there but the number of applications has increased tenfold.....in the vast majority of jobs I was applying to, my CV wasn't even getting in front of the agents.

What happends in most medium to large agencies, is that they have support staff, junior agents who make a first pass at the CVs and then pass the potential candidates to the agent who actually decides who to put forward. Or, even worse, they feed your CV into some software which basically displays your CV to agent searches, depending on keywords - I used to work for a large recruitment agency in thier IT dept (or what they called an IT dept), so I speak from experience...

So my first recommendation is before you even apply online, call the agent - sound out the role and sell yourself!! Your first challenge is getting an interview, and you got to convince the agent that if he puts you forward for an interview, you will ace the interview...at the end of the day, the agent just wants to earn his fees and will put forward candidates that he thinks will get the role.

Also, if you see a job spec that contains some elements that you do not have experience in, still worth calling the agent - not all items on a job spec are a "must have".

And very important, as suggested above, tailor CV to job spec.....cant stress how important this is....

Consider a longer commute, and if you have downtime now, see what skills are in demand and get a book and learn it......UML and DSDM seem popular right now. Doesn't matter if you dont know it inside out, most at client site wont either....

good luck....

Many thanks sal262. I've used UML extensively in my previous roles.From your thread i could see where my problem lies - getting through to the agents.I will have to redouble my effort on that front.

[bullseye]

Guys,

When you say UML, which bit of UML have you used? As a BA are you guys required to do all those UML class and object diagrams? or is it limited to Sequence, interaction diagrams and use cases? When you say extensive use of UML do you mean the use of all the above, is it?

As a BA which bit is more important?

I will stop here, I'm tending to get into that quirky questioning mode.

[NickNick]

Thanks NickNick.

Do you mind me asking you which website this is ?

The secret but rather good cv library