State of the market

[gingerjedi]

I spoke to a couple of agents over the last few days, they said this would be the last serious week and after that it will tail off to nothing until at least mid January.

I've seen a few ads with '10x Analysts/PM's/Java bods required' which must be bollox at this time of year.

[Green Mango]

I spoke to a couple of agents over the last few days, they said this would be the last serious week and after that it will tail off to nothing until at least mid January.

I've seen a few ads with '10x Analysts/PM's/Java bods required' which must be bollox at this time of year.

Still companies recruiting in Aerospace.

Pratt and Witney are recruiting engineers for jobs in Canada (software and hardware).
Unfortunately permanent, but if you want to live in Canada ...

[baronne]

all quiet on the western front

I'm finding it extremely difficult at the moment, been out of work 9 weeks now and there is nothing around in my line of work in the south west region (cardiff, bristol, newport, etc.) - mostly PMO and developer roles being advertised but not much infrastructure. never had much of a problem before - had 2 years continuous work.... what's happened??!?

[Cata1yst]

You're in my search area too Newport, Bristol, SW

I think your right I've seen little infrastructure stuff around and we'd probably be competitors for anything that comes up. Applied for one in Plymouth last month. I think at the moment you just have to take the hit get a position further afield.

Plenty of wanking jobs available if you have PM and insurance/finance. I wonder why there are so many of these positions but seems banking clients have become picky. Well good luck to them as it seems they are left unable to fill the positions rather than taking someone that can side step from another industry into banking.

EADS + Aerospace in general has lots at the moment, had a quick shifty earlier but mostly perm.

[baronne]

You're in my search area too Newport, Bristol, SW

I think your right I've seen little infrastructure stuff around and we'd probably be competitors for anything that comes up. Applied for one in Plymouth last month. I think at the moment you just have to take the hit get a position further afield.

Plenty of wanking jobs available if you have PM and insurance/finance. I wonder why there are so many of these positions but seems banking clients have become picky. Well good luck to them as it seems they are left unable to fill the positions rather than taking someone that can side step from another industry into banking.

EADS + Aerospace in general has lots at the moment, had a quick shifty earlier but mostly perm.

yeah... I would work further, but we had a new addition to the family means I'd ideally like to stay within a reasonable commute. I'm thinking of changing direction - infrastructure is soooooo uninteresting, well, for me at least.

[craig1]

Thought this would be the best place to stick this.

Start my new contract on Monday in Edinburgh for a nice company with a good reputation. Probably the hardest gig to get in my entire contracting career!

12 people for first phase interview, 4 for second phase. Second phase was presentation to senior managers on how I'd exploit my prior expertise to deliver their project successfully followed by panel style Q&A session.

Then agent wanted to knock down my rate following offer because "the client wasn't sure my experience warranted the rate". I held out and promised to raise this with the client, this prompted lots of back-tracking and panicking from the agent trying to get me to not do that due to "commercial sensitivity", in other words, he was bluffing and trying to up his margin. If anything, my experience warrants a far higher rate but I'm not going to grumble too much considering I actually have a role in these quiet times.

Then the contract was the worst thing I've read. Probably got a first-year law student to draft it and they got exceedingly snotty when I presented them my requirements for change. They couldn't even understand that I wanted more than just "contractor" in my description of duties. Also, on payment terms, they wanted to leave that blank and couldn't understand why I didn't "trust them" when wanting 7 calendar days listed formally as payment terms.

Ah well, a twelve month contract will hopefully see me through to a more buoyant market when I can ignore the cowboy agents.

Edit (all below added)
The market has been a right stinker while applying. Agencies acting like chuggers on London streets. Clients acting like they can bully you because they know the state of the market. Fighting for agent attention through the "F5 apply" group of Jobserve browsing unemployed people. Fighting for agent attention through the newly-redundant (last 24 months) people who are trying the contract market out of desperation. It'd better improve as there are lots of people out there right on the bread-line and benched for far too long.

[herman_g]

Niche skills, was working for Bob at Lloyds - of course that ended ( last day August ) with no notice - only a phone call late at night after working very long hours implementing. To Lloyds discredit, they backed Bob 100%.

Took a sort-term a couple weeks into September to shore up the account a bit.

Bob's still trying to find a replacement for me at Lloyds. First they tried a couple agencies - one working out of a council flat in Wembley ( asking for "preferably very competetive rates ). They found nobody. Next the position went permie ( Bob spammed all Linkedin members with suitable skills ) and now they have three agencies offering a permie salary range of 70-120K. Bob's clearly going nowhere with his work at Lloyds. Nice to see him gone soon from that piece of work.

Then the phone started ringing in December - had four interviews lined up out of nowhere. Big boom on the second one - very nice rate also!

Funny market. Good to have a piece, though.

[PropertyCrashUK]

Big increase in contracts in my UK region part of the World but they are all wanting security clearance in place.

[gadgetman]

Here in Melbourne the market is booming and I can't find people to fill my tester roles at any level. Even our (Bob-based) partner can't supply onshore resources, there are just too many large IT Programmes on the go right now.

I need about 15 people and an associated Programme has demand for upwards of 50 testers soon....

[gingerjedi]

Support gigs have picked up in the SW to the point where most good people shouldn't find it too difficult to actually land a gig (still at a depressed rate) which was the hard part.