Market really this bad?

[expat]

Just to go back to one of the earlier posts. Why do you guys include meals in your calculations?? Surely you'd be eating at home?

I agree with most of what you're saying, in particular about good quality people. I consider myself one in my field, and well suited to contracting; and indeed the more everybody and his brother pile into contracting, the harder it is to stand out. Especially, I have to say, since most agents just do keywords. I have certainly discovered in previous recessions that it is not worth giving up one's special skills and just hunting for e.g. bog-standard SQL coding jobs: not only are thay paying even fewer peanuts, there are hundreds chasing them and no way to distinguish yourself.

As for expenses, when I am in a hotel, I eat out; if I were at home, I would not. That's why I include these costs (restaurant dinners only). If I actually pay it because I'm away from home, and wouldn't if I weren't, then it is a real cost; and not including it would simply lead to a failed budget.

Much bigger costs are flights, hotels, and indeed getting to and from the airport especially at the UK end Return rail to London £48, across London, then Heathrow Express return £32. That's more on getting to the airport than I often spend on meals for the week!

[swamp]

Take the developer situation for example - it's not a rare skill, it's just everyone that is a developer jumps on the contract bandwagon - permies go down because everyone "wants" contract, and we end up with a skills shortage - driving clients to take contractors.

Senior developers are fairly thin on the ground. For Agile projects you need good, senior developers (and DBAs, config management ppl etc.) Even in a recession you may struggle to rapidly assemble a skilled team of permies.

Many projects are limited in scope so clients often only hire a few permies. Yes some companies can and do hire permies as contractors then fire them, but this isn't an option for many places.

Many projects are in public sector or in other organisations that don't have or want a permanent IT development capability.

[The Agents View]

Thanks for your input guys - I'm glad to see I'm not completely off the radar in terms of my thoughts. I think the issue alot of the experienced/senior/good people have is making themselves stand out. Whilst there are hundreds of keyword agents out there, I actually think this is often driven by the swathes of contractors who spam us on a daily basis as well. As I look at my inbox I have 7 direct approaches from consultants looking for work, 5 of them have never worked in my industry sector, and I happen to know that one of them is someone I would never represent, regardless of how good he/she claims to be.

It's also amazing how people with a years experience keep coming to me to tell me that they want to "get in" to my market sector on a contract basis. The response of "I specialise in contract/interim resources who have already delivered in my sector" often goes down like a sack of spuds, but you don't take a more expensive contract resource, train them and make them good at what you want doing - you take a permie for that, and invest in your team.

I often liken it to Ikea flat packs - the first time you manage an item, it takes 3 hours, 12 cups of coffee, cuts, bruises, and a kicked cat - the second time you do the same thing it goes together in seconds, and looks perfect - that is what contracting is about - doing something you already know how to do - not making it up as you go along!! There are obviously major exceptions to this, but they're transferrable skills (eg, stepping from say the haulage industry, into the mail industry - same theory, different sized boxes).

If I tell you that a colleague of mine placed a very in-depth role advert, with specific requirements (not discouraging those with the majority of what we're looking for from applying, but making it clear that there is a specific skill set required) and ended up with 147 applications within 3 hours, as well as countless telephone calls from candidates with no relevant skills at all, you can understand why some people go down the keyword route. I'd not do that myself, but in an industry where results are king, I can see the point of view of those who do - the only problem is they charge stupidly low margins, which cuts those of us who know what we're doing out of the equation because we get tarred with their brush until we've had chance to prove ourselves - which makes generating new opportunities, even for my existing relationships, tough to find.

TAV