Bench update

[Clippy]

Quick straw poll for those currently on the bench.

How long have you been out of contract?

What area of IT do you work in?

How are you finding the market at present?

[Clippy]

My status

How long have you been out of contract?
8 months

What area of IT do you work in?
Service Delivery

How are you finding the market at present?
Not many contracts for my skills but seems to be a small spike in permie positions at the moment.

[pmeswani]

How long have you been out of contract?

Since July 09

What area of IT do you work in?

I forget, but I think I am in IT Security.

How are you finding the market at present?

Pretty cr*p. But I do have an interview for permiedom.

[vandiss]

How long have you been out of contract?

1.5 months

What area of IT do you work in?

Java dev, build management

How are you finding the market at present?

Pretty quiet in January, but seems to have come alive in the last couple of weeks (I'm looking generally in Scotland). Had a couple of very encouraging interviews (judging by agent's feedback), just waiting for one to bite!

[norrahe]

How long have you been out of contract?
couple of months (does it count if I still invoice in Jan?)

What area of IT do you work in?
Insurance

How are you finding the market at present?[/QUOTE]
Quiet for PM stuff, if I wanted BA, then there's lots.

[conned tractor]

How long have you been out of contract?
Approaching 3 months.

What area of IT do you work in?
Systems/ control Engineering.

How are you finding the market at present?
A fair amount of leads leading to bugger all at the end of it.

[memyselfandi]

How long have you been out of contract?
Approaching 3 months.

What area of IT do you work in?
Java Development

How are you finding the market at present?
Quiet in Jan, but have some leads. Couple of contracts, and a permie in the pipeline within the last week. Didn't have any calls up until last week, and am now receiving at least 2-3 calls a day. Seems that these are actual jobs as well as the agents are not fishing as much as they have been.

[HeadOfTesting]

How long have you been out of contract?
Now in my 15th month.

What area of IT do you work in?
Senior test management.

How are you finding the market at present?
Bad in absolute terms but better (than last year) in relative terms, but largely because there literally was no market in 2009 so the only way was up. The market is volatile (I can have up to 3 calls in one day but then go up to three weeks without a call). The prevalence of piss takers is reducing albeit slowly. 95% of calls are about perm roles. I have a very bearish outlook going forward.

[BolshieBastard]

How long out of contract?

Actually finished in November 09 but didnt look for a new contract until middle of January this year. So although coming up for 4 months, I've only been looking for about 6 weeks.

What area of IT do you work in?

Senior \ Test Analyst.

How are you finding the market?

Getting quite a few calls about roles (not fishing exercises as they dont ask about where I was previously) and being sent detailed job specs which are very skills specific.

Seem to spend quite a bit of time going through my experience and how it fits the role then get down to rates.

And that tends to be the last you hear!

[zippy.mini]

How long have you been out of contract?
2 months. Only been looking for a month though

What area of IT do you work in?
Wintel and VMWare Tech Arch\Infrastructure support\Implementation

How are you finding the market at present?
Seems to be a few jobs in London\South in general, but very little north of Watford. Applying for jobs in my region (midlands) where I have just about all the skills (and clearance for SC jobs) and not even getting a call back. I either get calls for jobs that pay a pittance and I'm blatantly over-qualified for or just the opposite! Hopefully I'll blag my way into one of the latter ones if I make it to interview :-)