Reply to: What's going on with these spammy job portals then?

[DeludedKitten]

Market is as quiet as I've seen it, even during the banking crisis crash (not that I'm in banking).

The roles are drying up, anything that is interesting / suitable you hear nothing back, permie roles have been put back to next year

[tsmith]

The number of roles listed across all job sites for what I do is ridiculously low. Lowest Ive seen in 7 years. Literally one or two new roles a week. And even then many are not relevant - in vertical market I dont have experience of.

[jmo21]

Are you sure you mean 'contractor friend'?
I think any contractor (on here especially) would have been able to give you that kind of response if he/she has kept up to speed with the latest developments.

Yes, I did mean a friend who is a contractor?

I was simply agreeing and using an example to the person I quoted.

[SteelyDan]

It’s terrible at the moment.

I’m getting spammed by CV-Library for roles I’ve already spoken to the agencies about and the role(if it ever existed) has been taken weeks ago.

I have submitted my cv for perfect fit roles, and a lot of the time you don’t even get a call or call-back if you leave a message.

It's often the case, but not always, that many of these roles don't exist at all, they're put there for the agent to harvest fresh CVs.

[BABABlackSheep]

It’s terrible at the moment.

I’m getting spammed by CV-Library for roles I’ve already spoken to the agencies about and the role(if it ever existed) has been taken weeks ago.

I have submitted my cv for perfect fit roles, and a lot of the time you don’t even get a call or call-back if you leave a message.

[SteelyDan]

Chatting to a contractor friend last week, who is just about to finish a contract, and he said the market is the quietest he can remember it in years, and attributes it directly to the upcoming IR35 changes.

Are you sure you mean 'contractor friend'?
I think any contractor (on here especially) would have been able to give you that kind of response if he/she has kept up to speed with the latest developments.

[dx4100]

I have noticed this quiet a bit during my latest search.

I tend to just find out which agency / client is advertising the role - not all that hard and message them directly on linkedin avoiding the job board.

[jmo21]

To be fair I'm finding it sucks right now. It's very quiet in my area for a start and then there is this seismic change that seems to have gone on. In the old days there were quite a few roles, apply quick, interview same week and start the week after. All my gigs in 12 years have been like this.

Chatting to a contractor friend last week, who is just about to finish a contract, and he said the market is the quietest he can remember it in years, and attributes it directly to the upcoming IR35 changes.

[SussexSeagull]

To be fair I'm finding it sucks right now. It's very quiet in my area for a start and then there is this seismic change that seems to have gone on. In the old days there were quite a few roles, apply quick, interview same week and start the week after. All my gigs in 12 years have been like this.

Now? Nearly every role I apply doesn't move days, in some cases weeks. Nearly 2-3 weeks for two public sector roles. The number of them evaporating before interview is surprising, and in most cases I feel pretty confident they have rather than the agent lying to me. The few I've interviewed for have also fallen through for obscure reasons. Not one single one has just been a straight race against another guy and the winner gets the gig. It's surreal.

Wondering if it's just me or contractor recruitment has changed. I know the IR35 will be starting to have an effect but this seems to have been going on awhile.

But yes, I also expect next year to be a bloody awful one. I was optimistic at the start of all these but I'm certainly not now.

It changed in about May this year overnight. I was looking for a new contract then and the first couple of weeks suggested no problems but then everything seemed to go into slow motion or stop.

[ruasonid]

And to make matters worse these sites are utter crap at their GDPR responsibilities. Had a very long conversation with both Nevoo and Contract4jobs to force them in to deleting my data. Both came back with 'we've taken you off the job alerts' so had to point out that wasn't my request and email tennis starts. I've now got to do this again with Experteer. I'm too old for this crap.

Same here. I keep a spreadsheet with all my job apps, responses, etc. I use this to track GDPR requests where necessary - I can't keep up (mainly, there is no acknowledgement or response at all).

[tomtomagain]

If the end result of advertising jobs is to get a referral fee, can I ask what people's impressions are of what all the re-routing is supposed to achieve?

Doesn't have to be fact, just asking for thoughts.

Well if you had the unique and revolutionary idea of creating yet-another-job-site what is the first two problems you will encounter?

1. You have no jobs to list on the site
2. You have no candidates to apply for the jobs.

So you'll do whatever it takes to fill your site with spammy / low quality / fake jobs, in the hope you can build up some verifiable traffic so that eventually some shmuck will consider paying you to list a job on your site.

In the meantime a second source of income can be to harvest as much personal data as possible with the intention of selling it on to whomever wants to buy it. Email address, job title, name, telephone number, location ... all valuable stuff to sell to a sales team looking for potential targets.

[simes]

If the end result of advertising jobs is to get a referral fee, can I ask what people's impressions are of what all the re-routing is supposed to achieve?

Doesn't have to be fact, just asking for thoughts.

[Eirikur]

Things have really changed in the last few years since I was last on the market. The number of these pass through portals that have popped up is both astounding and infuriating.

Apply for a job in linkedin and you can be passed through three or 4 different forwarding pages before one pops up. Struggling trying to keep my details off some really tulip sites like ziprecruiter, Neuvoo and other crap that just harvest my data by stealth. I am super diligent not to sign up for anything and lo and behold, an hour later they are sending me target lists of jobs.. WTF.. Click them and it's back through a number of portals.

Just applied for one on linked in..

Role title and company said Ironblade. Says the client in the text through.
Hit apply and I get redirected to Job4
Hit apply and it redirects me to AdView
Manage to find the apply button without setting up an account - Takes me through three forwarding screens until I end up at Experteer.
Fairly lengthy application process, upload CV, experience. Hit Submit Application for Role button and..
What the absolute ****!!! Takes me to the careers page of that company! What have I just applied for??
And just to make matters worse, the job isn't even on the company page any more.

What the **** is all that about? Am absolutely livid.

I go back to experteer fearing the worst and lo and behold I have an account, a 60% filled in profile and signed up for job alerts.

It's a ******* disgrace. When did all this crap start?

I posted about this a while ago. It's extremely annoying. Also when it says something like posted 8 hours ago and when you click on it and after being rerouted a couple of times you arrive at the original posting and it says the add has expired weeks ago.

[Lance]

Clients are dithering left, right and centre. It looks as though the finance departments aren’t releasing the funds.

Couple that with agencies who are geared up for busier times.
End result.... too many middle men chasing the same few roles.

It’s going to get worse for the agencies than the contractors. An agency will have far bigger cash flow risks than a prudent contractor.

[cojak]

Clients are dithering left, right and centre. It looks as though the finance departments aren’t releasing the funds.