State of the Market

[CheeseSlice]

Any top tips/tricks for CV's these days? Current one has always been great in the past but maybe it's time to switch it up a bit.

Yes. You must have the absolute best CV in the pile. Near matches don't cut it these days.
Are your skills and certs up to date? If not, better get started.

[tomtomagain]

I'm just stuck in a rut and need an opportunity to move into modern skillsets. Everything is cloud these days and I'm not quite there yet. Every job description asks for 25 different skills, many of which I haven't even heard of (though that'll always be the case in IT). I'm stuck in old tech, but I have strong holistic experience in my area.

Start your own company, build a business & product using your IT skills, focused on something that you like or do. For example, some sort of property management app.

Set yourself a time-limit, say 12 months, and go for it.

You'll learn tonnes and be able to pick up any new skills that you are missing. If it's got no traction this time next year, look for something else. You'll not have wasted the time.

7 years ago I was in a rut, so that's what I did. Never looked back, it's been great. I got back into coding ( was previously being dragged up the management tree ), get to choose the technology that my company uses, got skilled up on Azure, had fun learning TypeScript, learned about marketing and selling .... heck even the management skills I had developed but disliked, such as running tenders turned out to be really useful.

[eek]

Start your own company, build a business & product using your IT skills, focused on something that you like or do. For example, some sort of property management app.

Set yourself a time-limit, say 12 months, and go for it.

You'll learn tonnes and be able to pick up any new skills that you are missing. If it's got no traction this time next year, look for something else. You'll not have wasted the time.

7 years ago I was in a rut, so that's what I did. Never looked back, it's been great. I got back into coding ( was previously being dragged up the management tree ), get to choose the technology that my company uses, got skilled up on Azure, had fun learning TypeScript, learned about marketing and selling .... heck even the management skills I had developed but disliked, such as running tenders turned out to be really useful.

This - in the current market you may as well go it alone - the only pain will be potential customers saying that they aren't interested - what's important to remember there is that it isn't personal.

[tomtomagain]

- the only pain will be potential customers saying that they aren't interested - what's important to remember there is that it isn't personal.

Very true - and of course it takes 3 - 6 months to get a V0.9 product/business launched .... and hopefully things will be on the up by the end of March 2021!

Coming out of a deep recession with a new product is the ideal time. Your established competitors could well be hamstrung with debt and the other baggage they've picked up during the good years.

[blade99]

the market is there, but perm roles are basically contract (but as PAYE) as the consultancies have the most power now. Ive just moved to contract again but its a specialist role, and managed to bail just inside the probation period. As a gesture of goodwill, ive offered to work all the days im due in holiday, to minimise disruption on client and cover for ciritcal person.

If you guys are looking for work, you need to look at the firms who run the contracts, leverage old contacts etc. From what i have seen contracting is going to come back fast in 2021. Remote working is actually the biggest issue. Many clients and organisations are simply not productive or can not manage the chaos. the best equipped to do this are quality outside contractors, and firms going to realise this soon.

On the flip side, poor quality PM / Scrum master / DM / BA are being found out fast, most on contracts, and they are actually the contract market's developer best friends for now. They accelerating the issues.

And on a side note. Qualittest lol

[CheeseSlice]

A fairly basic one but make sure it is compatible with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that many recruiters and portals use for uploading your CV. Many CVs can be hampered when a search is carried out because it has formatting that ATS systems often don't like e.g. tables, boxes, lines, graphics, footers etc.

Another tip if applying to an advert is to call the agent or drop a message (via invite feature) on Linkedin, no InMail quota needed.
This will vastly increase your chances of them interacting with you, skipping the ATS entirely.

[SueEllen]

A quick search on jobserve for my skillset returned around 10 relevant contract job opportunities posted within the last 7 days in the whole UK. Half of them at least are just for cv harvesting (same agencies I've never heard of posting the same spec week after week after week).

At what point can someone say the contract market for their skillset is dead? Does the number of roles need to reach 0?

I'm finishing my contract tomorrow and taking the rest of the year off

When the agents who get you roles have all retired.

There are some skillsets that aren't advertised on the boards but the agents in the niche know everyone working with the skillset.

[edison]

Another tip if applying to an advert is to call the agent or drop a message (via invite feature) on Linkedin, no InMail quota needed.
This will vastly increase your chances of them interacting with you, skipping the ATS entirely.

I've always advocated this but found the last time I was looking about a year ago that quite a few agents seemed much less likely to respond and especially take calls than in previous years. I saw on several adverts that they wouldn't even talk to anyone before they had applied and uploaded their CV which seemed pointless.

[SteelyDan]

Another tip if applying to an advert is to call the agent or drop a message (via invite feature) on Linkedin, no InMail quota needed.
This will vastly increase your chances of them interacting with you, skipping the ATS entirely.

I'd normally agree with this (LI msg or invite), but in the current climate, it's what everyone is doing, so it's sorta been cancelled out now.
Some of the blatant (almost) begging messages I've seen on LI is quite disturbing, so there are a lot of desperate people out there.
Some agents don't even take calls, and many aren't listing their email address, although google usually (not always) helps get around this.
Maybe their preference is now to drown themselves in CVs?
It's tough, and that is an understatement.

[vwdan]

Tentative boom.....I'll believe it when I'm sat there invoicing though.

Very odd market still - my only saving grace is I seem to have limited competition. I know an advert for this job went out on Wed (Long story, I was already in the running) and they didn't interview anybody else.