State of the market

[Troll]

I am seeing top notch PMs struggling to find roles & ditto for developers/ testers in this market

I am also witnessing (in current role) a lot of sub continent workers, now naturalised competing against the UK born IT workers at market rates so the much cheapness is not an issue- & certainly any role we advertise is immediately swamped with Bob (& Nigerian) applications & on paper their qualifications look good (reality is somewhat different though)

So more people competing for same/ fewer roles can only mean one thing

It can only get worse & the golden days of contracting may be over

[Old Greg]

Honestly, I've never heard such a bunch of Cassandras! Talk about the glass being half empty lol!

I'm in .Net / sql development and the .Net market is presently booming. Ok, rates aren't that great but I'm coming to the end of my 3rd 3-monther since December having had only 1 week on the bench. Contract is up Friday week and I fully expect to walk into something the following Monday. Maybe you think I'm over optimistic but unless things have changed in the last couple of months whilst I haven't been looking then my pecker is well and truly UP at the moment!

Best of luck.

But remember that Cassandra was right, even though nobody believed her. And she was raped and killed, but I'm not sure how that applies to this scenario.

[CheeseSlice]

I'm coming to the end of my 3rd 3-monther since December having had only 1 week on the bench.

All through the same agent?

[gricerboy]

All through the same agent?

Nope, 3 different agents

[Muttley08]

Think you're very lucky then gricerboy - must have a niche in demand.

Generally things are awful in PM work - but a couple of niche skills can still swing it. I'd say to anyone having trouble, have a look at what's in demand and get some training / qualifications to stand out to the pimps with. Not to say I think most training courses are tosh - but the pimps don't know any better!

[theroyale]

sql...

I am in sql development about two months into a contract. When I was last looking in August this year I was fairly swamped with responses. Had 3 interviews lined up within 10 working days of looking - cleared one of them and in a contract now. At least in sql (dev/dba) there seemed to be loads of jobs, and very little fishing as well - the agents I spoke to all meant business and were fairly keen to get my cv across for possible interviews.

[DieScum]

Got two calls this morning for totally different roles from a CV I put on monster about a month ago. Had one Monday as well.

One 400 contract, two permie jobs.

I said I was only really interested if the perfect job as I already had something else lined up.

"Define perfect job?"

"100k"

He just laughed and then went on to tell me about the 45k permie job with 6k car allowance and potential bonus.

Sorry mate. Not even in the right ballpark.

If I was on the bench it would be a different matter though. Maybe it's a blip but market seems to be hotting up.

[Keen2Work]

Are you neither a tester, developer, project manager, etc? What do you do?

I've recently worked in development/support in the financial arena.
I've also worked in real-time development, coding and testing in the distant past.

The replies reflect pretty much what I expected. One or two claim that they're doing just fine in their specific domain - good luck to you I suppose - the balance of replies seem to reflect the view that things are generally fairly poor. I derive a little comfort from those assessments, because it's really easy to become quite paranoid.

However, the first question I asked was about the value of certification to a potential employer?

I'm interested to know whether anyone has direct experience of gaining a contract on the back of certified competency in an additional skill through study alone, without having also had specific commercial experience to back it up?

Obviously, we all have a range of IT skills - but what about adding say 'Java certification' to your portfolio and then applying for roles where it falls within the client's list of pre-requisites?

In the absence of a job offer, is this a legitimate consideration for anyone with aspirations of staying in our recession hit industry?

[Andy2]

on the bench

I am on the bench since 5 months and counting. There seem to be lot of people on the bench and the few jobs advertised gets swamped with lots of CVs. I am even applying for permi jobs now.

[rsingh]

I was on the bench in march 08 and getting very little response to applications. This was despite having over ten years dev experience in finance. While on the bench I passed a certification in the technology that I was experienced in and the situation changed overnight. I landed a role at my best rate.

A cert in itself is no use. However in this climate it can be useful to validate your skills. It will also get your cv past the box tickers.