The IT recruitment marketplace
The past several years have seen a consistent period of skills shortages in the IT sector which has ensured increasing salary and contractor rates year on year for IT professionals together with an influx of skilled IT individuals from outside the EU. The marketplace has been very much 'candidate led'.
Today we can all see that unemployment across the UK economy is rising and the consensus is that the UK is to experience a sustained period of economic contraction. Given this scenario it is perhaps understandable to assume that the IT job market is not as rosy as it once was.
Our view is that we see the IT jobs market as being in a very unusual state. It is true that there have been redundancies and a general reduction in the use of IT contractors. The marketplace is clearly now 'client led' whereby recruiting organizations have access to a larger 'available' talent pool and can secure good IT talent for less. We have seen IT contractor fees reduce and static permanent salary levels.
If you are a candidate currently 'in between' work (either looking for a new permanent job or a consultant looking for a new assignment) our advice is to be 'prepared' to be flexible on items such as salary expectations and hourly or day rate fee expectations. It is also good to communicate this flexibility at the front end too (at CV presentation point) as you may not get the opportunity to do so at a later point (if a client has already confirmed an interview short-list).
However there still remains a shortage of individuals with strong proficiency in some IT disciplines. We have also seen evidence of 'inertia' within the job market, whereby many good individuals currently in permanent roles that perhaps had plans to seek a new role have decided to stay put given the uncertainties in the economy. There are still candidates who are securing multiple offers and who are turning down job offers having had cold feet about moving on.
We are very happy to chat to you and provide an honest assessment of where we see salaries and contractor fees given your skill-set.