State of the market

[BolshieBastard]

Well, I've applied for my first permie position. Think that says a lot. Just had a gadge at my cv for 2011 through to today.

I worked all through 2011, switching contracts in the Autumn with only 1 week between the roles. 2012, I worked through to June, picked up a new contract after a 6 week break to Jan this year. So that's 2 full years on 3 contracts with only a 7 week break.

Since Jan this year, zilch and we are into May. Jobs appear, phone agents and all you get is VM, leave a message and no callback, rinse and repeat to boredom.

[NDawg]

This thread was started in October 2010. What is the state of the contractor market now?

Depends on what you do. For BAU Service Desk, it's looking terrible right now. The contracts on offer are either FAR too low with rates (to the point where permie is actually more appealing) or ghost specs.

Hopefully it picks up soon. I'd rather not go back to low-paying permie roles. At this rate though, I may have no choice.

[stek]

State of the market

Depends on what you do. For BAU Service Desk, it's looking terrible right now. The contracts on offer are either FAR too low with rates (to the point where permie is actually more appealing) or ghost specs.

Hopefully it picks up soon. I'd rather not go back to low-paying permie roles. At this rate though, I may have no choice.

I'm on a project that has to be implemented by next Feb, by the Euro countries (SEPA) - non Euro inc UK next by 2016, hoping that'll see me through till then anyway...

[MyUserName]

The C++ finance market seems okay but only if you are very good (years of experience in associated technologies, domain knowledge etc).

I am not looking but I have recently been approached about a role at the 600pd mark, up to and including the company name and job spec.

I also got approached about 2 permie roles, one at 80k and one at 70+ bonuses. Once again including company names and specs.

[BlasterBates]

It might or it might not, I know a few C++ programmers in finance who go for interviews but don´t get very far, it might be improving but quite a few of these roles seem to be "time wasters" i.e. lots of agencies chasing a few roles and then subjecting candidates to very difficult tests, and they do have a lot of experience. It reminds me of 2003 when there were few roles and they were very picky.

[MyUserName]

It might or it might not, I know a few C++ programmers in finance who go for interviews but don´t get very far, it might be improving but quite a few of these roles seem to be "time wasters" i.e. lots of agencies chasing a few roles and then subjecting candidates to very difficult tests.

Really? That would suck. I went as far as taking a test and doing a telephone interview even though I did not want the perm jobs. I wanted to keep my interview skills up to date and see what tests/questions are popular now - they were both pretty fierce.

[BlasterBates]

Well the thing is I´ve been looking at these jobs, and what I see is that the focus varies from job to job (reading their job description) on one contract it´s Grid Computing on another, multi-threading on another it´s credit risk, and even though multi-threading might sound as though it would be straight forward I heard from one contractor that it´s very difficult.

[BolshieBastard]

It might or it might not, I know a few C++ programmers in finance who go for interviews but don´t get very far, it might be improving but quite a few of these roles seem to be "time wasters" i.e. lots of agencies chasing a few roles and then subjecting candidates to very difficult tests, and they do have a lot of experience. It reminds me of 2003 when there were few roles and they were very picky.

I had a timewaster interview not long ago.

Agent said it would be a high level interview lasting about 30 minutes. He wasnt kidding! the two kids sent to interview me were ill prepared, didnt seem to know what questions to ask and clearly didnt work together as an interview team.

The feed back i got was best candidate but they wanted someone living closer! WTF, Im only 18 miles away!

I've since seen been made aware they re advertised for 2 permies at 25k pa! IMO, my interview was a complete waste of time if they really wanted a couple of junior permies.

[stek]

State of the market

I just spotted a £60k pa work from home permie role, sure it's ECM but I'll never know now as they aren't considering contractors!

[MyUserName]

Well the thing is I´ve been looking at these jobs, and what I see is that the focus varies from job to job (reading their job description) on one contract it´s Grid Computing on another, multi-threading on another it´s credit risk, and even though multi-threading might sound as though it would be straight forward I heard from one contractor that it´s very difficult.

The tricky part with multi-threading (as with a lot of things) is that there is so much that they can ask you about that it is hard to have all of the answers in your head.

I had the same problem years ago when being phone interviewed. Was asked what happened inside 'new'. I told him, he asked what happened inside 'malloc'. I told him what happened but he kept pressing for lower and lower details until I explained that I had never needed to delve inside malloc, I knew how to use it and that was all I had ever needed to know.

He failed me for not being able to answer 'basic C++ questions'. It turns out that before he got at job at that bank he had worked on writing compilers so what was basic in his knowledge base was unknown in mine.