Reply to: State of the Market

[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.

[Bluenose]

WTF is wrong with me?

I am security cleared, Oxford Grad who has 25yrs of development experience in Java and .Net.

What have I got to do to get a contract, I have been looking for nearly 2yrs now. FFS.

Some of us lost everything during COVID.

Your path is not a lonely one, its literally a routlette wheel of luck. Yes, some people on here make their own luck but chance plays a big part.

If you want a job right now it seems Texas and the surrounding states is the place to be in 2024/2025.

Cold comfort for Brit IT workers but the enormous influx of people every year wont be helping, the economy is not growing fast enough to absorb everyone.

[gables]

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.

[dsc]

Damn. Went after a nice looking contract, but turned out to be something with someone already at the org lined up to take it, but they have to advertise any way because of procurement rules. Waste of my time, and I polished up my CV for it too.

Maybe whoever is getting promoted, will leave a space behind for me..?

Recruiter says the last year has been bad seemed but optimistic that things are turning? My expectation is that its not going to improve quickly.

There's loads of those job ads around and it's the same story every time, it's internal hires, but they have to advertise to tick all the boxes.

As for being optimistic...well lets just say it's much easier on the mind to keep thinking things will change for the better. I'm sure they will at some stage, but I wouldn't say it's going to be any time soon.

[willendure]

Damn. Went after a nice looking contract, but turned out to be something with someone already at the org lined up to take it, but they have to advertise any way because of procurement rules. Waste of my time, and I polished up my CV for it too.

Maybe whoever is getting promoted, will leave a space behind for me..?

Recruiter says the last year has been bad seemed but optimistic that things are turning? My expectation is that its not going to improve quickly.

[ensignia]

If you don't mind me asking ... what sort of work do you do?

Product design and management.

Have 3 very different clients in different areas but generally the work is the same between them i.e. researching users, planning, designing and coordinating front end builds for web applications.

[mogga71]

I've never had more work with 3 full time clients, just been extended with 2 clients (one til Feb '26, and the other til Aug '25), both accepted rate increases and all are OIR35. 23/24 has been the most profitable year for my Ltd but it looks like 24/25 could be even better.

I'm going to make hay while the sun shines, because who knows what's around the corner, and it may very well be that I'll be in the same boat as many others.

If you don't mind me asking ... what sort of work do you do?

[SussexSeagull]

I dined out a hell of a lot on my SC. But even they started giving those away like candy a while back. Lets just saying speaking English is not a perquisite to attaining one. I assume DV is the new SC. That is, if you can get a company to sponsor DV.

I got SC in 2016 and thought my work finding problems were over but never used it again. I think my problem was it was actually quite a boring contract with few sellable skills, although I am sure that isn't the case for everyone.

[SussexSeagull]

Why wouldn't tech be headed the same way as...IDK automotive production, etc.
We could already be in the future and you don't realize it. I mean I wish I was wrong but I can't see it bouncing back, if anything its found its value point.

My predictions are, support, maintenance, niche. If you are not already in those spaces, beware, look elsewhere.

There always used to be quite a good living to be had if you were experienced in legacy platforms that they didn't want to train permanent staff on as they had a limited shelf life.

I suspect we are in the middle of a perfect storm at the moment caused by a combination of interest rstes, business nervousness, IR35, outsourcing and, possibly, clients sitting on their hands thinking AI is about to change everything in the short to medium term.

The only slight upside I can offer is getting a contractor in avoids the rise in employer NI contributions.

Regardless a lot of people who were previously paying a lot of tax are heading towards relatively safe permanent jobs or claiming benefits.

[CodeCobbler]

There are no SC roles either. I have had SC for years and always got called about SC roles. Always thought it was a bit of a safety net.

I dined out a hell of a lot on my SC. But even they started giving those away like candy a while back. Lets just saying speaking English is not a perquisite to attaining one. I assume DV is the new SC. That is, if you can get a company to sponsor DV.

[ensignia]

I've never had more work with 3 full time clients, just been extended with 2 clients (one til Feb '26, and the other til Aug '25), both accepted rate increases and all are OIR35. 23/24 has been the most profitable year for my Ltd but it looks like 24/25 could be even better.

I'm going to make hay while the sun shines, because who knows what's around the corner, and it may very well be that I'll be in the same boat as many others.

[CodeCobbler]

I definitely don't agreee with the "tech is dead" hypothesis - but that graph certainly isn't heading in a good direction.

Why wouldn't tech be headed the same way as...IDK automotive production, etc.
We could already be in the future and you don't realize it. I mean I wish I was wrong but I can't see it bouncing back, if anything its found its value point.

My predictions are, support, maintenance, niche. If you are not already in those spaces, beware, look elsewhere.