Reply to: Current state of market

[Fred Bloggs]

I have email alert on a daily basis. There are more contrator roles than perm roles in the job alerts. But I am not sure whether that reflects the job market.

7

Admittedly, I am in process engineering not IT. But Aberdeen and London are the only parts of the UK with any work. The rest of the UK is dead.

[7of9]

Dire.

I have email alert on a daily basis. There are more contrator roles than perm roles in the job alerts. But I am not sure whether that reflects the job market.

7

[Fred Bloggs]

Current state of market?

Dire.

[Hicks]

Afternoon all

My current contract is due to expire in the coming weeks and, from a brief search of the jobsites, the market still seems to be depressed.

What are peoples experiences, particularly those in the Service Delivery arena, of the current state of the market?

Thank you.

[SueEllen]

My understanding and also from what I have read on this forum is that the summer months (June - August) are quite months as most people are on holiday and that any additional recruitment tends to take place in September/October.

However, some recent posts on this forum seem to suggest that recruitment also takes place in the summer.

What are peoples experience of this?

I was hoping for a small spike in roles in September/October.

Recruitment takes place all year round especially if you contract directly with clients. However you need to ensure you don't have more than a couple of days booked for holidays in peak holiday season if you are looking for a contract then.

[Hicks]

Many UK project budgets run tax year to tax year.

Projects get a green light at the begining of the tax year (April) and start staffing up, people are on holiday, some leave. So they have a look at projects at the end of the summer and see if they are still on track. Hire more people around now, use up the 2nd and 3rd quarter budget and sometimes 4th. So no more hiring untill Jan.

If they have used up all the budget and can't get any more money, there will be no more hiring in Jan. It looks like the half year figures will be bad, so no extra budgets for most projects.

If you don't get a new role in the current hiring phase, you might have to wait until project get new funding next April.

My understanding and also from what I have read on this forum is that the summer months (June - August) are quite months as most people are on holiday and that any additional recruitment tends to take place in September/October.

However, some recent posts on this forum seem to suggest that recruitment also takes place in the summer.

What are peoples experience of this?

I was hoping for a small spike in roles in September/October.

[Troll]

Just started a 6 month contract back in London on the highest daily rate ever - bonus -its direct so no agency margin

Phone is ringing constanly so seems boom times are here again

[theroyale]

SQL

SQL dev looks a LOT better now than it did for the first six months of 2010. I spent a few weeks earlier this month looking for contracts (started one now) and agencies were relatively falling over themselves to forward cv to client/arrange interviews.

But I suspect budget/fiscal year cycles will take over from about a month or so? i.e. perhaps July-August was the big hiring period in the second half of the year? Or do people see another hiring phase before/after Christmas?

[Jog On]

Which should force market rates down shirley?

I'm sticking with pure technical as once you break past the throng of low end roles things start to open up nicely.

I've switched from support into application packaging and virtualisation (App-V). 12 month gig with very nice rate.

There's a lot of Windows 7 coming up and App-V, SCCM, virtualisation/cloud computing stuff seems to be kicking off.

Support seems to be dying a death ratewise - and I don't miss it one little bit, I don't even have a phone on my desk and I get maybe 4-5 emails a day now. I'm loving being one of those people who sits there with their headphones on being left alone to get on with their work

App packaging (MSI) and App-V/SCCM is a very easy transition from support.

[alreadypacked]

That's a concern.

What makes you think this?

Many UK project budgets run tax year to tax year.

Projects get a green light at the begining of the tax year (April) and start staffing up, people are on holiday, some leave. So they have a look at projects at the end of the summer and see if they are still on track. Hire more people around now, use up the 2nd and 3rd quarter budget and sometimes 4th. So no more hiring untill Jan.

If they have used up all the budget and can't get any more money, there will be no more hiring in Jan. It looks like the half year figures will be bad, so no extra budgets for most projects.

If you don't get a new role in the current hiring phase, you might have to wait until project get new funding next April.

[gingerjedi]

Two things:
1 - Service Delivery is usually an on-going relationship mgmt role more suited to a permanent appointment.
2 - It turns out to be easier than doing a tough support job meaning few barriers to entry as the support roles are paying NMW + a quid so everyone has dashed for the door marked Service Delivery.
I am in the same game, scoring roles with fairly large breaks in between, it's only my performance at interview (6 offers from last 6) that is keeping me going.

Which should force market rates down shirley?

I'm sticking with pure technical as once you break past the throng of low end roles things start to open up nicely.

[lukemg]

Two things:
1 - Service Delivery is usually an on-going relationship mgmt role more suited to a permanent appointment.
2 - It turns out to be easier than doing a tough support job meaning few barriers to entry as the support roles are paying NMW + a quid so everyone has dashed for the door marked Service Delivery.
I am in the same game, scoring roles with fairly large breaks in between, it's only my performance at interview (6 offers from last 6) that is keeping me going.

[kingcook]

Seriously, you do just Perl?

Perl is something I picked up along the way doing testing gigs. Comes in handy sometimes but I never realised there are (or were!) gigs in it.

I do it with other related things like mod_perl, Catalyst, Template Toolkit, HTML, MySQL, etc.

I've been doing it mainly in perm jobs, but started out as a contractor 1 year ago.

Looking to re-train to Java and/or PHP.

[gadgetman]

Seriously, you do just Perl?

Perl is something I picked up along the way doing testing gigs. Comes in handy sometimes but I never realised there are (or were!) gigs in it.

I do Perl and there's bugger all. Mind you, Perl doesn't seem to be that popular anymore anyway.

Time to re-train once my current gig is over.

[gingerjedi]

1 It's dire.

2 Lots of redundant permies wanting to be filthy rich contractors like us.

HTH.

...taking roles at near permy rates without realising the true cost of being your own boss.

They'll be back to permidom when the penny drops.