Reply to: State of the Market

[SchumiStars]

It's been 2yrs. I have never, ever seen it like this bad before for so long. I am begining to believe, that the market has permentantly changed now.

It's quite a possibility. There is nothing to suggest that IT will permentantly grow and demand will always be fluctuate.

In the 90s, my dad used to run video shops which were run out with even blockbuster coming and going. Then it was computer shops. So I am aware nothing lasts forever and perhaps contracting including software development has run it's course.

Perhaps it might be better to find an alternative income stream, I was hoping to retire in a couple of years anyway.

[edison]

I use it more for short term relative numbers, month on month change is an indicator of if things are improving or going backwards. Sadly its the latter at the moment.

Another indicator i use: One of my old agents has all their roles listed on their website site. When things are good they have 20+ roles listed, they are currently down to six roles. Which is similar to what they had at the Covid lows in 2020.

I use the same indicator with an agency that has placed me three times. They normally have around 200 contract and perm jobs on their site. It's around a third lower in total now. Proportionately they have more perm/FTC roles now, contract roles are half the normal number.

[edison]

Would need to be a year on year comparison with Autumn last year.

Not saying that the market is in any way good but I am not sure Jobserve is the force it used to be. I can't remember the last contract I got through it and am fairly sure the ones I have got were never advertised on there.

I agree, the site seems to have been quite pants for a few years now.

I surprised myself by finding my current role through an agency I'd never heard of, after making contact with an agent advertising a different role there a few weeks previously.

[Fraidycat]

Would need to be a year on year comparison with Autumn last year.

Not saying that the market is in any way good but I am not sure Jobserve is the force it used to be. I can't remember the last contract I got through it and am fairly sure the ones I have got were never advertised on there.

I use it more for short term relative numbers, month on month change is an indicator of if things are improving or going backwards. Sadly its the latter at the moment.

Another indicator i use: One of my old agents has all their roles listed on their website site. When things are good they have 20+ roles listed, they are currently down to six roles. Which is similar to what they had at the Covid lows in 2020.

[SussexSeagull]

Talking of Jobserve, job listings completely collapsed on Jobserve around two weeks after the budget. From a high of 43,000 down to 16,000 in the headline number on the front page this week.

It is a little bit early to blame that entire drop on Xmas?

The UK government isn't helping with confidence, one hope is Trump ignites confidence in the US, and the Big Tech firms in the US and the US Investment banks then start hiring again in the UK, so kick starting things here as well..

Would need to be a year on year comparison with Autumn last year.

Not saying that the market is in any way good but I am not sure Jobserve is the force it used to be. I can't remember the last contract I got through it and am fairly sure the ones I have got were never advertised on there.

[Fraidycat]

Talking of Jobserve, job listings completely collapsed on Jobserve around two weeks after the budget. From a high of 43,000 down to 16,000 in the headline number on the front page this week.

It is a little bit early to blame that entire drop on Xmas?

The UK government isn't helping with confidence, one hope is Trump ignites confidence in the US, and the Big Tech firms in the US and the US Investment banks then start hiring again in the UK, so kick starting things here as well..

[SchumiStars]

I started using Jobserve in 1999 to find my first role. It was the .dot.com boom and I had absolutely no problems getting interviews and offers. It was fantastic.

I remember having 5 interviews one day and as a young grad, in a oversized suit, walking from one offer to another offer. Loved it!

[SussexSeagull]

The whole thing is an absolute mess, but slightly better than Jobserve which seems to simply have no jobs.

It doesn't really serve much, either.

[SussexSeagull]

I know people, me being one of them, enjoying the contractor lifestyle of new challenges and avoiding office politics but ultimately it is a way of paying the mortgage and rates going through the floor is just going to push the better people into permanent roles to either weather the storm or see them out until retirement where they can enjoy paid time off and other benefits.

The HMRC will get what they wanted. It's just they should have been careful what they wished for.

[hairymouse]

LinkedIn job search is hot garbage. It ignores keywords in searches and makes up skills that aren't in your CV when generating results.

This is so true, not only does it ignore your keywords, it seem to ignore any filters you set (permie or contract). It also allows you to click "don't show me this again" and then merrily show it to you on the next search.

Then there's the multiple "women in coding" and LGBTQ alliance roles. Should I even bother applying for those if I'm not a woman or gay?

The whole thing is an absolute mess, but slightly better than Jobserve which seems to simply have no jobs.

[GJABS]

At this rate, contractors will soon be paying the client £200 a day for the privilege of coming to work .

Well indeed one option open to some of us with savings, might be to buy into an existing business who uses our skills. Not without risk of course.

[edison]

I don't normally get these types of emails, mainly because I don't do any recruitment I'd imagine.... anyway just received this from a recruiter:

I know you may not have any active requirements currently, but I just wanted to reach out as over the last 2 weeks I have worked a number of roles within the Support & Infrastructure space so I have multiple, pre-qualified, immediately available candidates for the below jobs roles.

Help Desk Technician - £150p/day
Technical Support Specialist - £200p/day
IT Support Analyst - £250p/day
Network Architect - £350p/day
Security Engineer - £300p/day
Desktop Support Technician - £200p/day
Infrastructure Engineer - £275p/day
Site Reliability Engineer - £350p/day
IT Manager - £300p/day
Infrastructure Manager - £300p/day

All day rates stated above are all-inclusive of our recruitment fees and you can utilise the services of these contractors for a long or as little as you like and you have the right to cancel their services immediately.

I've done a lot of recruitment for some clients in the past. Had a few of these speculative emails recently along the lines of asking whether I've firmed up plans for 2025 yet and how the recruiter would be happy to solve all my resource problems.

IT Manager at £300 a day all in? £250 a day would only get you a new grad BA just 2-3 years ago. At this rate, contractors will soon be paying the client £200 a day for the privilege of coming to work <cue Four Yorkshiremen sketch>.

[Bluenose]

Do you do keep changing job titles on LI? I was doing that to match my CV. Its the main reason I got fed up with LI because I felt I had to constantly tweak it to tell the same story as my CV. Can't be bothered with that - if I need to I will put something a bit generic like Consultant Software Engineer.

No, I re-alignment my titles and skill tags when LI did an upgrade about 2 years ago and have not touched them since, only to add new tags to 2 contracts I completed (1 add per 12 months). In my field there was a re-alignment in titles but other titles were more deeply affected when Scaled AGILE became a thing.

[willendure]

Make sure you have your Linked-in tags setup with right right search terms and tweak your job titles to suit.

Do you do keep changing job titles on LI? I was doing that to match my CV. Its the main reason I got fed up with LI because I felt I had to constantly tweak it to tell the same story as my CV. Can't be bothered with that - if I need to I will put something a bit generic like Consultant Software Engineer.

[Bluenose]

Ah statistics.
While the market is pretty terrible, the number of roles with 'developer' in the job title might not correlate exactly to the number of developer type roles.

For instance, it seems that 'Software Engineer' roles have become a lot more popular recently (below) - 50% of the number of 'Developer' roles.

The job used to be 'Programmer' but not many advertised roles for that these days - worth expanding your searches perhaps as trends in job titles do change.

I can't upvote this post enough. Make sure you have your Linked-in tags setup with right right search terms and tweak your job titles to suit.