I’ve spent some time over the weekend getting geared up for the Great Contract Hunt. CV has been updated into a base model for whatever comes up. LinkedIn profile has had a bit of a tidy. Got some extra material to load on to the main website when I get the chance. Initial emails been sent round some useful contacts on the chance they want someone to bail them out of a hole.
Also been looking through the various Job Boards. There’s work out there, rather more than there has been of late, although a huge amount of it is in Finance and so effectively out of bounds. Public Sector seems to have gone quiet, probably because they’re all waiting to see where the axe will fall after the election, as fall it surely will. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, with agents looking for people with stupidly specific skills or silly rates (in both drections) or, more usually these days, not posting a rate at all.
One thing that never ceases to surprise me is the number of times you see a key role being advertised – Programme Manager, say – to run a major piece of work that’s clearly been in the pipeline for a while, but with a start date of next week. I mean, is that really a good idea? Surely you want to find the best candidate and the chances are that the good ones in this market are the ones in work, not the ones on the bench.
I’ve also had an insight into how Broadbean works, which was interesting and depressing in equal measure. For example, did you know the agent can see every job you’ve applied for; how worrying is that? If only we could bring back agents that know their clients and their contractors instead of the chicken farm processes we are stuck with these days.
So hunting starts in anger from tomorrow. I’d like to say I’m looking forward to it. But I’d be lying…
By the way, thanks for keeping visiting somewhere that has been really boring for a week or two. Hopefully we’ll be back to weekly rant… posts again from now on.
Hey Malvolios,
Found your blog today via your sig link on:
http://forums.contractoruk.com/accounting-legal/8376-best-umbrella-company-use-7.html
Having used Broadbean during my recruitment consultant days I was intrigued by your comment because Broadbean is for posting jobs to multiple jobsites specifically designed for use by recruitment agencies so they dont have to post the same job on 5 different job sites. Instead you post it to Broadbean and it then uploads that job and its details to all the job boards. Broadbean has nothing to do with candidates/ job hunters, just FYI.
Scott
So you didn’t find the bit that maintains a history of which jobs candidates have applied for then…?
re broadbean. i concur with scott broadbean and their like, we use idibu, are purely the means to upload jobs to multiple job boards. to the best of my knowledge they are not connected to applicants.
all job boards track and log candidate activities.
it can be amusing/annoying when a candidate says he has not applied to a specific role only to see that he has applkied to the same role 4 times .
if a client puts a shot timescale on the hire of senior level contract staff, one can almost guarantee that the process is run by procurement or resourcing which more often than not means the best of available canididates do not get a look in.
there is still a perception that the market is flat and there are droves of readily available, good candidates willing to work cheaply.
That is where reality and belief do not meet these days.
hey malvolio how about a rant on the nightmare that is compliance, that is only getting worse and worse.
Not actually suffered from compliance issues to date, although with an application just gone in to a major UK finance house, that might be about to change….