I’ve been getting an increasing number of emails from agencies over the last few weeks. This is of course a good thing, since it both indicates that the market is starting to pick up again, and people think my CV is worth following up on.  So clearly a cause for celebration.

Or is it?

Firstly, the market is definitely picking up. I am seeing more and more roles in my sphere of work, and while there is a preponderance of improvement programmes and the like, there are also a lot more development roles coming out. So clearly UK PLC seems to be gaining in confidence. Unlike UK Public who still seem to be listening to the eponymous Mr Balls rather than trying to look at the reality.

Secondly, these agents are clearly searching their own resources to find people since none, or very few, of the roles appear on the job boards. This again is a good thing, surely, since it means they are starting to apply a little intelligence again rather than Broadbeaning everything and waiting for the CVs to arrive.

And thirdly the emails are coming from agencies I don’t normally work with, so they are pulling my details from either the few boards that have a searchable copy of my CV (sorry, my company’s sales brochure), or from LinkedIn, or from their own internal databases.

But….

Look a little deeper and the jobs on offer are, shall we say, a little divorced from my skill set and working practices. This week I’ve been offered exciting opportunities as a help desk analyst at a staggering £15 an hour, two permanent  Business Analyst roles , one in Leeds and one in Norwich (I live in Bristol) and a couple of Project Manager roles – again, one of them permanent – demanding technical skills that are nowhere to be found on my CV.

As an aside, why are they always “exciting”? In my world “exciting” means “badly managed”.

Anyway I have to conclude that these agencies cannot use a search function properly, make no attempt to verify the results of their searches and don’t bother reading the CVs they are pulling up. And if they are using their own data, clearly it needs a lot better data management that it’s been getting.

So it’s good to see them getting away from the monstrous Jobserve. Shame that they haven’t realised that bad CRM data is a lot more harmful than no CRM data.

Back to the drawing board chaps.

And one of the things that gets me is that one criterion is the application of Six Sigma and Lean methods to the role. Six Sigma is for repeatable production processes where you are trying to get absolute consistency of product by refining the process. After 20 years in service management, I can assure you that it doesn’t work like that; you may get the same symptom – “My PC don’t work” – but if you have the exact same cause and corrective action every time then you’re doing something badly wrong anyway – like not applying problem management techniques for example.

Anyway, rant over. Got an interview this week. It’s 100 miles in the diametrically opposite direction to the job itself, which is actually an easy commute for me, but looks like an interesting piece of work. Fingers crossed…

Heigh ho, just another example of UK’s middle management culture I suppose.

I was also asked recently why I had gaps in  my recent history. Couldn’t see why that was relevant, although the most recent one was because I finished the job ahead of time and was let go early (good for IR35, if not so good for the company bank account). I thought about answering “Because I’m an old git who doesn’t want to work 370 days a year any more”, which is at least true, so talked about the other things I do that are nothing to do with IT and not all that much to do with process improvement. Since I only do them when I’m out of contract, why are they relevant anyway? You’re buying 30 years of focused experience by hiring me, but if you want a wage slave get a permie.

Still very quiet on the job hunt right now, for some reason. I’m up for four roles at the moment, all advertised with “Start date: Immediate” but a call round the various agents yesterday showed that they hadn’t had any feedback themselves as yet. Which is why I have breaks in my work history; I spend ages waiting for some inefficient hiring manager to find time to think about how to get the resource he needs to let him get on with his own job.  The guy asking the question about the CV gaps took three weeks to get from initial CV submission to arranging the interview, for example.

Don’t think I’ll use that as a reason the next time I’m asked though…

By the way, anyone noticed that the number of new IR35 cases has dropped away quite significantly. Wonder why…

Thinking back on this one, though, I may have spotted the problem. One question was “What governance structure would you put in place to manage this programme”. Given that this is a well-established international company who, you might think, would have all this buttoned down already, I suggested I might well use their existing processes for the technical delivery side and focus on the political aspects of running something with four equal partners in the overall programme. Good answer except that it does assume they have a process and it does assume they understand that running cooperative ventures is not a matter of KPIs and deliverables, something I don’t think the interviewees had realised.

So write that one off and keep on looking. And next time, don’t make the blindingly obvious error of thinking the interviewer knows all of the problems of the role they’re trying to fill…

One other role is irritating me as well. It’s literally 15 minutes from the front door, paying serious money and all about people management through transition to a new system.  It’s been open for three weeks now. And that’s because the prime requirement from the client is that the incumbent has a detailed technical knowledge of the precise application in question. Which is already in use elsewhere in the group, which has a full support operation in place and which performs a back-office function that’s largely invisible to the target audience, whose main challenge will be taking on  the new business processes being introduced. Talking to the agent they’ve had dozens of CV s from blokes like me that know how to deliver such a project but none from anyone with the high level of application skills they demand that they don’t need.  Oh for the days when you could talk to the hirers and not have to do it all by remote control!

So had a bit of a break to recharge the batteries and indulge in some other pursuits totally unrelated to IT and am now back on the market. And every time I come back, life gets a little more depressing…

Actually, there appear to be two separate camps developing in agency world. On one side you find people who are pretty professional, who follow a solid process (one not only sent me the job spec for the interview, but how to get there, a quick profile on the interviewers adn what the company are looking for and their copy of my CV as submitted) and who almost behave like agents used to in the days when you could talk to them. On the other side, there are a load of ex-estate agents…

Standard practice used to be to send in the CV and follow it up with a phone conversation. These days, I’ve started checking out their Linked In profiles first (every recruiter has a LinkedIn profile, even though they wouldn’t dream of using LinkedIn themselves). If, as is often the case, the “recruitment consultant ” is either an office PA or only been in the job five days, there’s no point in talking to them so you may as well save the cost of the phone call. And that means at least half your carefully worded applications vanish into to the ether, never to be seen again.

Odd thing is, I meet  them in roughly equal numbers. And the ones I think are worth talking to and that have a brain usually put me forward or can explain why they won’t be. Which is how it should be.

Still early days. Only had a couple of interviews and no offers so far. Watch this space…

Phoned up about 9 roles during the last week. Spoke to four people; as usual the other five exist in some inaccessible limbo land where nobody can reach them. All four liked the CV and thought it was relevant. It’s been submitted to the client for three of them. The fourth one I bailed out of; not only did the “person specification” (five pages of it)  not match the job description (only four pages for that one), they wanted someone to do everything for them on demand, work long hours and weekends on short notice and pay peanuts. Sorry, not interested.

However, the other three…

One, the client won’t take on anyone without Local government experience. No matter that the role is one where the job to be done would be the same regardless of where you were last time round, we only want people who already work here. So much for bringing in external expertise then; all they are going to interview are people from a limited and almost certainly out-of-date pool.

Two,the agent  hasn’t heard back yet, a week later. Given this is a “must be free to start immediately” role, that seems a little surprising. Then again, while the work is interesting the rate isn’t that special and the location is frankly horrible – just too far to commute, nowhere civilised to stay, not even very nice scenery. Still, not dead yet, merely sleeping.

Three, again no response from the client to the agency as yet. so either that’s a dead one or once again the job isn’t as urgent as they thought it was.  Heigh ho…

Talking with an agency the other day was a bit worrying. We mostly realise that the agencies aren’t actually that interested in the contractors they’re supplying these days, but it seems that any role will garner 100+ applications within 30 minutes of it appearing.  More worryingly, the standard business model is to send in as many CVs as the client wants to see (usually 3-5) so they’ll use the first ones they come across with all the relevant key words in them (that’s anywhere in them; they aren’t going to waste time reading what they say after all). Which makes it rather tricky to sell your services, when you think about it.

Perhaps I should stick to writing. Anyone got an good ideas for  an international best seller…?

My God, isn’t that a depressing exercise…

Basic parameters are something reasonably senior, preferably a bit difficult, ideally within two hours of home:  having had six months of living in hotels the other end of the world, it would be nice to have the option of coming home for the evening. The skill set is mostly Service Management but I’ve run big programmes and have a couple of solid interim roles under my belt, so I’m not that worried about which industry or even which label they want to put on it.  And I have clearance at the moment, so neatly avoiding  the obvious excuse for not considering me for work.

So, out of around 50 roles in my scope, I’ve applied for five this week. Bear in mind I’m more than capable of doing all of them: I’m not going for work I can’t do, the only real filter I’m using is to ensure the rate means I actually make a profit at the end of the day. I’m not going to work 100 miles away for £250 a day, I’m afraid.

So first one, CV goes in, follow up with a phone call, no answer. Try several times, no answer. try calling at 6pm (cunning plan to avoid the switchboard), no answer. OK, scratch that one

Second one. CV goes in, follow up phone call, speak to the agent!! Sadly he’s working on filling a couple of support roles right now, will be looking at this role in about two hours. Never hear another word (and by the way, he’s working on two support roles at £30 an hour tops rather than one senior one at £500 a day and likely to need more staff – where do these people learn their economics? Toyland?)

Third one – “Fill in this form” says the website. So I do. No contact details so no follow up possible.  Last I hear of that one.

Fourth one. Good match, fairly local, and I talk to an agent that has a brain. He’s going to submit the CV, will send me a confirmation email later today. Three days on, no email.

Fifth one. No contact number on the ad (Why, FFS? Aren’ t you supposed to be a sales organisation?). Ferret one out from Google and LinkedIn. Call in. Nobody available, leave a message. Yeah right, we know all about write-only Answerphones

Had a long talk with an agency I do know. Seem their “recruiters”  haven’t put me forward for roles because “He can’t do it” – in whose opinion, may  I ask? – or because I don’t have some paper qualification or other, despite me having been using that methodology for the last 20 years . Get me the sodding interview, I’ll show them I can do the bloody job. Who’s the expert here, me with thirty years mostly senior experience or some double glazing salesman with attitude? (If you want a real laugh, look them up on LinkedIn and see just how well qualified most of them actually are…)

I think this is going to be a long couple of weeks…

First one: last time for a long time hanging around this miserable excuse of an airport.. Right now I have three loudspeakers shouting at me about a flight to Dusseldorf – and I’m in  the quiet area… Took 20 minutes to get through security – about 100 people, but only one gate. And the beep went off when I went through the detector for some reason. And I can her the air conditioning running so why is it over 75 degrees in here.

Never mind, I’m using the car next two weekends then the contract is done and dusted anyway. Have a week off first, then go for the next gig. I’ve enjoyed this one and despite earlier comments they are a great place to be – but time to move on. And no more early morning flights on rattly planes surrounded by disinterested (and ultimately pointless) security.

Second one: a solid commitment to address IR35 in the Government’s recent combined manifesto. Even it they merely clean up the rules about when it applies it would be a huge step forward. Or bin it altogether, ideally. I own and operate a perfectly normal UK limited company, all I want is to be allowed to continue to do so without worrying about my status in the eyes of some HMRC hero.

Otherwise job hunting continues its usual rock-strewn path. Nobody on the other end of the phone – including my own agent, would you believe. Go for a job with the perfect match of skills and nothing. If you do get a positive response, one week later and still no feedback from the end client. Called two of my networking contacts: one’s only got permanent work (shudder) and the other is out of work. Still, early days: certainly the number of jobs is a lot higher than it has been.

So anyway, weekend coming up. OK, I have to spend all day Saturday in London at a PCG CC Meeting, and Sunday I have a bedroom to decorate. So probably not going to see much sunshine then. Or even dig out the barbie for some cremated steaks.

Dusselldorf shouter is back again.  Will you go away, I’ve been to Dusseldorf I don’t want to go again. Roll on the summer, that’s what I say.