Need to get off the bench....

[koolherc]

What a timely thread for me to stumble upon! Just coming to the end of a gig at Xmas. Had a few calls but nothing definite. I'll bookmark this for reference. Good luck OP!

[Bellona]

Any update from OP ?

Just checking in to see if OP has made any progress.
Sat on the bench too, as are some others here , and genuinely interested in how others are doing.
It's great to see the boom posts too - after the initial that it isn't me

[mall]

Need to get off the bench

Last contract finished mid oct. Nothing since.

Trying the networking think on Linkedin. Seems people use it more now, not sure it helps though.

Effectively dead now till mid jan. Best I can hope for is a gig to start in the new year.

Fingers crossed for OP and others on the bench.

[Peter Loew]

The PM / market is truly dire. But some great posts here.

I'm lucky enough to be in contract albeit at a minimum rate, however I might have the opportunity to go perm for a decent salary and I think I will take it, after almost 8 years not of contracting. I can't face another gap on the bench speaking to mostly stupid agents trying to chase roles that either don't exist or are outdated, I have a good war-chest, it's my patience I am worried about. If I go for the perm role, I will use it to train up, skill up, cert. up then leave after 12-18 months and return to what I do best. Nothing definite but we'll see.

P

[MPwannadecentincome]

The PM / market is truly dire. But some great posts here.

I'm lucky enough to be in contract albeit at a minimum rate, however I might have the opportunity to go perm for a decent salary and I think I will take it, after almost 8 years not of contracting. I can't face another gap on the bench speaking to mostly stupid agents trying to chase roles that either don't exist or are outdated, I have a good war-chest, it's my patience I am worried about. If I go for the perm role, I will use it to train up, skill up, cert. up then leave after 12-18 months and return to what I do best. Nothing definite but we'll see.

P

Can't you use any warchest to cert up in a gap? If my warchest was a bit bigger that's what I would be doing now - well I am reading material regardless anyway.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Just checking in to see if OP has made any progress.
Sat on the bench too, as are some others here , and genuinely interested in how others are doing.
It's great to see the boom posts too - after the initial that it isn't me

Hi I'm still here (on bench)!

Craig1's post set me thinking and gave me a little (much needed) motivation! I also read some of the "dressing gown" thread (much too long to plough all the way through!).

Points were made about searching for roles nationwide. Happily my personal situation (I am getting Divorced) means that I am not living with the family so I am free to live anywhere as long as at weekends I can see my kids. This means I can, if the rate is reasonable, travel to anywhere in UK or Europe. In the short term my rental commitment still has to be covered so that is why there is a pressure on the rate.

Taking into account all my living costs and the fact that I am burdened with child maintenance and paying the former marital home's mortgage, leccy, gas, water, landline, broadband, sky (waiting for court date to sort all this out!) my daily rate requirement is in the upper £300's pd + additional costs of travel or rent if staying away from home.

My CV was reviewed extensively by contacts and colleagues in Spring and was updated with feedback. It is possible some of that feedback was wrong, I might go back to my older format as I am not convinced the new format that was suggested to me in a new template works but its been hard to get anyone to say the new format does not work. Since mid November I have been running with 2 CV versions, one generic and the other more focused on Agile as a lot of roles have that as a requirement now. Of course there is always room for improvement and suggestions made by craig1 and others in other threads I will have to look at in more detail.

For immediate action last week I updated CV on a couple of job boards and took out the "willing to travel within x miles" criteria on my searches and profile so effectively I am searching nationwide now. Still another job board to go. I also use "indeed" for job searching and am searching nationwide there too. Net result, a HUGE increase in roles being mailed back to me, too many in fact, but haven't yet found a good way of cutting down the results without losing valuable roles in the process. Still, a false positive is better than now't, so I have reviewed each job carefully and categorised as follows:

a - very poor match due to industry or systems/process/environment experience lacking where the ad deems it a highly important requirement - deleted immediately
b - good match except on industry where ad indicates they might consider people from other industries - put on pile for further consideration
c - better match in same or closely related industry and rate well above minimum needed - put on pile for analysis to tailor CV / covering letter
d - very good match except rate is much lower - put on pile for further consideration
e - very good match and close to required rate or rate not stated ("negotiable") (unfortunately not actually had any in the "close to required rate")

With the widening of the search results there was a backlog to catch up on and the category C and E roles took a full day to work through. I tried a similar analysis approach on the rest but given the size of categories b and d I decided the ROI on most of them in terms of time was not that high and to apply with a generic CV to all of them, particularly as each day went by a new batch of roles being advertised were coming in - interestingly quite a few roles are advertised at the weekend.

The other thing I did was once again update my status on linkedin but this time asked a small number of people to "like" the update as that has a big impact on spreading its reach (I have noticed with linkedin's new feature on the right hand side that just one "like" can double it spread particularly beyond 1st level contacts). Then I trawled through all the invitations I had been ignoring (because I did not know them) and accepted invitations from Agents. I then went through some contacts to see which Agents they were linkedin with and sent invitations.

The net effect of both of the above resulted in the phone ringing multiple times a day this week. Biggest problem was trying to figure out what role I had applied for when the Agent was calling back - typically they would call when I was not near my laptop. I faced the normal problem of rate discrepancy and found some agents seemed to appreciate my flexibility in rate and pushed the advertised rate up a bit to keep me interested, whereas others it was clear the rate was fixed but it was too late I had already overpriced myself so I lost that opportunity. In other cases Agents were calling me because of my linkedin profile and had more interesting roles available. So over the course of this week I now have reasonable to good opportunities open for 5 roles and a telephone interview this afternoon

I also followed the advice of breaking the day up into 2 parts for job hunting. As most interesting TV is on in the evening/night I now do not set an alarm for the morning, I will wake up when I've had around 8 - 9 hours sleep (bliss!) or if the phone rings (which rarely happens before 9:30 am). Then I will eat brekkie whilst checking what emails have come in overnight - most spam and subscription emails come in overnight including job ads. I can delete all unwanted mails and ads prior to having a shower then once dressed I categorise the other emails on my laptop and applying for category b and d roles straight away whilst online and if I have an already tailored CV for the better matched roles I can send them off straight away. I then make the point of doing something else - there are Agile / Scrum articles I want to read as well as the MSP book I have purchased. I have discovered its better to do this all away from the laptop and away from the crummy room I am living in, so I go out of the house and sit in the library / coffee shop / comfy chairs they have just put in the shopping center. This way the middle of the day period including lunch is passed in a relaxed way so that I can focus on those roles that need more analysis / tailoring of CV or cover letter in the afternoon before cooking something yummy for dinner.

Well that's the theory anyway, in practice this week I have had stuff to do on selling the former marital home or dealing with the Divorce case and most of the phone calls have come during that period and I have had to check emails job boards on my phone during the day a lot as more ads come in and they need categorising and it has ended up being late afternoon and dinner time when I have done the harder CV applications. Also I haven't done much reading/studying so next week I will have to adjust my daily schedule, on the other hand with the backlog out of the way the number of roles needing focus every day is reducing and I have more CV versions to pick from now.

As you can tell I'm not really a morning person !

craig1 made the point about deciding when to say enough is enough and go permie. That point for me would be Feb 2014. I have been turning down perm role interviews now as they are 2/3rds the salary of my previous role where I was perm, to meet that end Jan deadline I am going to have to start considering some of those roles as a backup plan.

In the interim with a few contacts I have said I am available for short term or part time help if any is needed which could help pay some bills and for Xmas until market picks up in January.

OK - off to prepare for telephone interview now!

[Damon]

Nice to see a positive post from you on this

I got divorced 4 years ago but luckily I had a 2 year gig to get me through that. Whilst reading your post I was thinking not sure I'd have coped being on the bench as well!

Good luck with interview

[Peter Loew]

Well, it depends how big your war chest is, I suppose. I think I have around 50k lying around in one account, which for me isn't that big at all, in fact it's pretty poor but then I've made choices where I haven't worked for 6 months at a time and needed to draw on my chest.

But regardless, if I know I want to skill up and do a number of courses, why would I spend what would probably be around 8k or so of my own money, at a time where I'd be generating no revenue? This way not only can do I have a steady income, I get to go on these courses, and apply what I've learnt right away rather than wait for the next contract, which could be doing whatever, wherever regardless of rate.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Nice to see a positive post from you on this

I got divorced 4 years ago but luckily I had a 2 year gig to get me through that. Whilst reading your post I was thinking not sure I'd have coped being on the bench as well!

Good luck with interview

Thanks!

and I have been invited to networking drinks in London tonight :-)

[MPwannadecentincome]

Well, it depends how big your war chest is, I suppose. I think I have around 50k lying around in one account, which for me isn't that big at all, in fact it's pretty poor but then I've made choices where I haven't worked for 6 months at a time and needed to draw on my chest.

But regardless, if I know I want to skill up and do a number of courses, why would I spend what would probably be around 8k or so of my own money, at a time where I'd be generating no revenue? This way not only can do I have a steady income, I get to go on these courses, and apply what I've learnt right away rather than wait for the next contract, which could be doing whatever, wherever regardless of rate.

Well you don't have to spend all the 8K in one go and it is unlikely a permie employer would do so either - not even over 2 years in most places!

Besides even spending some of that if it helps you get contract that has got be better after tax than doing a permie role?