What the hell is up with the market (or is it just me)

[northernladuk]

So, what the hell is up with the market?

PMs, do you find there's lots of roles out there? I do, but the majority of them specific to banking, oil and gas, health care and basically all the sectors I haven't worked in!

P

So there is something wrong with the market just because all the jobs are for sectors you have no experience in?

Maybe the market is so flooded with PM's they can now afford to get guys n gals in with experience in that sector so can afford to be picky?

It's not the markets fault you haven't worked in them.

[SteelyDan]

Maybe the market is so flooded with PM's they can now afford to get guys n gals in with experience in that sector so can afford to be picky?

It's not the markets fault you haven't worked in them.

T'is true...but it's frustrating that it's difficult to get into these sectors owing to market conditions, and I think the OP is expressing frustration with this.
Understandable; it's a bit of a catch-22 situation. He suspects (rightly or wrongly) that he can do the roles in these sectors, but of course the agents will only go with their clients' specific wishes - 'people from this background only please'.

Keep plugging away would be my advice.

[BlasterBates]

You don't put a cover letter, you do it in your CV.

My CV is primarily the same apart from the header, which I have a different profile and I list key achievements differently.

Eg.

I am an experienced Project Manager of 10 years working in Retail & Banking on X Y Z

Then list the projects you've managed.

Then

I am an experienced BI Consultant of 7 years working in Sales & Marking on A B C

That's all I do and that's how you tailor

Exactly, what you need is a summary page that should be tailored to the type of job going for. The summary should be sufficient for an agent to decide. The rest of it you can just leave as is.

Basically see the summary as "everything", the rest is just detail which will only get read for the bits they want.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

The Market is starting to really Pee me off. Compared to same time last year:

- Less roles
- Lower rates
- nothing local

Basically DOOMED

I am in a contract but I have been applying since December. December was good, first 2 weeks of Jan poor but not too bad, every week since then it has been getting progressively worse. Tough times.

[TheFaQQer]

The Market is starting to really Pee me off. Compared to same time last year:

- Less roles
- Lower rates
- nothing local

Basically DOOMED

I am in a contract but I have been applying since December. December was good, first 2 weeks of Jan poor but not too bad, every week since then it has been getting progressively worse. Tough times.

Should have taken the £85 a day increase in December, shouldn't you?

[The Spartan]

In terms of testing roles the market is quite buoyant it seems I had 4 calls yesterday trying to prise me out of the contract I'm currently in and a further 2 today, plus the countless emails I've received.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Should have taken the £85 a day increase in December, shouldn't you?

Actually - No. It was £85/day more but for only 3 months. At that time I still had nearly 6 months left on this current contract. So £85/day extra followed by the bench or status quo for 3 months extra. Who's the wise guy now?

[TheFaQQer]

Who's the wise guy now?

Until the three month role has ended, then the person who took is is the winner - there's always the potential to turn it into something longer. There is no potential for you to turn your six month underpaid role into anything other than another rate cut, or an extended underpaid role.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Until the three month role has ended, then the person who took is is the winner - there's always the potential to turn it into something longer. There is no potential for you to turn your six month underpaid role into anything other than another rate cut, or an extended underpaid role.

In most circumstances that is the case (and I would take the risk), however the project had a distinctly unique feature of being dead end. It was a hand over piece to a new system which had to be completed 1 month in advance of end of financial year, after which it would be outsourced (perhaps a reason for the large rate in the first place).

[Peter Loew]

Exactly, what you need is a summary page that should be tailored to the type of job going for. The summary should be sufficient for an agent to decide. The rest of it you can just leave as is.

Basically see the summary as "everything", the rest is just detail which will only get read for the bits they want.

I half agree. Agents who go for buzz words etc might be won over by the summary page; but agents worth half their salt will look through your entire CV, especially those agents with direct links into the client hiring person[s].

This morning I had a 30 min talk on the phone with an agent discussing the current market climate. Then we discussed CVs. He mentioned that PMs have a much tougher job with CVs because we usually have worked on so many different projects in different sectors, so it's hard to tell what we want to do next. Long story short, we agreed that we should have different CVs for different role types, just as said earlier on this thread. E.g.

Strategy PM
Digital PM
Agile PM
Etc...

However, what I found interesting is that he said not to put the technologies in your CV where you describe your roles. So rather than saying "we used MOSS 2010 to integrate into Autonomy to create user friendly search functionality" you say, "I PM'ed a project and the end result was a user friendly search engine that spanned across all the company records, HR systems, finance systems and payroll systems". He also said you should have a technology section where you can dump in all the technologies you've used, but the role description should be written for laymen.

I am now going to spend time and cut about 4 or 5 different CVs all with different job titles and emphasising certain skillsets. It's the only way in this market. I realised I've actually done Digital PM work for example, just under a different title of 'Technical Project Manager'. So I think little white lies and title altering CVs will be necessary.

I already tested this out; I saw a job ad, changed the job title on my CV (for every single role) to what the ad said it was looking for, and low and behold the agent called me back, emailed me and was basically hunting me down.

Yes, generic CVs or simply cover lettes / pages, are not enough to cut it in the current PM contract market.

P