petitefrancaise

why do you think this is?

Brexit? Anything else?

It's good news that you will have a job when you go back and maybe it will last more than the 6 months.

This business of having a huge list of requirements for a job.... I've heard so many times that if a woman sees that she doesn't have all the items on the list that she won't apply, whereas a man would. Maybe just appy anyway? You might well be the best applicant they have.

captainbligh

Brexit is probably 30% of it, the other 70% is the inevitability of the collapse of the UK IT industry due to lack of innovation which is evidenced by the lack of global British IT corporations who employ tens of thousands (think of how many American founded software companies there are who each have their headquarters in America and employ well over a million put together), not to mention the medium size American IT corporations which are still massive. And then think of all the Taiwanese/Japanese IT companies who employ hundreds of thousands in the USA. Now compare that to the UK where a lot of these companies have a small presence at best and the presence keeps on shrinking more and more.

The UK is a wealthy, wealthy country by global standards but the UK IT/Engineering industry is exactly the same as it's automotive industry if not worse due to lack of investment by gov which is only interested in banks/finance companies and also a lack of innovative spirit which is mainly a cultural/economic thing. In most countries it's looked upon to be the guy/girl that starts a business and dreams big, innovates in their shed and breaks through .... sadly this is not so in the UK as the dream of the underdog rising is not generally sold or encouraged which leaves the "hopes and dreams" to the already wealthy who have no interest in engineering/IT in general. I used to work in Cambridge and you will see millions upon millions of dollars slammed into startups started by Cambridge grads which almost all fail, yet small IT startups elsewhere across the country can't get a penny or any media time. Most of the investment money goes down the drain essentially or to a very tiny segment of society.

Lack of meritocracy and too much bearing on class is unfortunately stifling many facets of the industry in general.

The state of the IT industry in the UK is shambolic at best ::-(, with countries such as India/Taiwan/Korea/China/US totally gaping the UK, this is part of what motivates me to move back to the UK because I'd like to be the change that I want to see. I want to create jobs eventually, and not to seek them. There is a clear problem in the IT industry that multiple people need to address.

I'm a man and I totally understand that because I have sisters and have worked with many female colleagues. Unfortunately men are generally allowed to be more pompus and aim higher.

Sure, I'm applying as long as I meet 70% of the requirements, the software engineers I've interviewed here in Silicon Valley rarely met half the job requirements (and I work for a company rated in the top 5 for smartest engineers globally), so I'm aware that my application may be the best even if it only meets 70% of what's required. Only problem is recruiters aren't willing to budge.

My first name and surname are not English by the way so sometimes I feel my CV gets rejected on those grounds, unfortunately I cannot type in Ian Johnson or something as my name on my CV or refuse to put my name on my CV, imagine putting -name available on request-?

Jack8602

Tell people living in the North that, I'm sure they'd vehemently disagree with you.

Ah yes Brexit, the go to for blaming for lack of jobs

I know that if i moved back to the UK i'd be able to pick up a contract for £500 a day fairly easily based on the discipline of IT i work in

Saying that the UK IT industry is screwed based upon your specific discipline of IT is stupid. If you're not getting responses from the 100 applications you've said you have sent, then there is something fundamentally wrong with how you're applying, wording your cover letters, resume etc.

captainbligh

I used to be just like you, thinking that the IT industry has a huge shorted therefore jobs abound, not so. Sign up to some jobsite like reed.co.uk and let me know if you receive the responses you think you'll receive, I'm pretty sure you will be very surprised just like I was. Buy the way, the same CV more or less which got me 10 to 20 calls daily from recruiters 2 years ago now gets me 0 calls even though my experience has improved and has been added to the CV, the CV has also been professionally reviewed by two seperate CV review companies and 2 recruiters. So as far as I can see, it is the climate in the industry and not necessarily me, though I could probably improve my CV more.

By the way, my discipline in IT is not limited, .NET/C#,VB.NET, I can do and apply for, JAVA - same thing, PHP/JavaScript/HTML, etc same, Systems Admin - Linux etc, same. I can work a number of roles easy and am not limited.

captainbligh

I agree and disagree, I used to earn just over £50k in the North, subtract 1 loan, rent, groceries, car insurance, fuel, side savings, personal life insurance, house insurance etc, government student loan payment, emergencies, etc an you'll be left with £1k easy, which may seem very good if you're single but when you have other commitments or mouths to feed it's not that plenty, that's all I was saying. It would definitely be enough but not a comfortable living by any means as essentially it would take several years to make enough savings to make a significant difference. It wouldn't be life changing money and could leave you living hand to mouth, easy.

petitefrancaise

well, if you are so sure of this, why don't you offer to help?

Jack8602

It is limited - to majority development / coding etc. You wouldn't go into a end systems management role, that's what i mean by different IT disciplines.

I don't offer resume re-structuring services as part of my job...

petitefrancaise

Since your first post was in March 2015

http://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-5.../#post11589007

when you announced that you would be coming to Texas on an L1-b visa, you must have been employed by your current company for at least the previous 12 months.

So by all accounts, it's been 3 yrs and 5 months absolute minimum since you got another job.

I wouldn't be quite so certain that nothing has changed in that time and that it is still as easy to get a job now as it was then.

Jack8602

Good work detective, but with all due respect - you're talking out of your ass on a subject (which i presume) you know nothing about - IT.

Job search for my specialty in IT in London + 100 mile radius has 573 Jobs listed, 101 of which are on a daily rate contract.

Hence my point earlier, classifying the whole of the IT industry under one bucket doesn't work, i said in my above post that I'd be able to easily pick up a contract based on the discipline of IT i work in

captainbligh

Sorry about some of the typos in this message, it was early hours of the morning when I wrote this, like around 4 AM

captainbligh

If that's your idea of a healthy job market then you would be disillusioned within a fortnight of job hunting with that kind of outlook. I used to speculatively keep my CV "out there" just to keep on top of the job market and believe me 573 jobs within 100 square miles of the worlds capital city (or one off) is really nothing when you filter through the jargon you will find the following....

Out of the 573 jobs probably half are duplicates due to different agencies/recruiters re-posting the same job if the company offering the job uses multiple agencies.

And then out of the remaining half most of the positions are filled internally.

Then out of the remaining jobs some are speculative in order to solicit applications and some have "no budget" where the manager will seek approval for budget after finding "the stellar candidate" which is why sometimes the bar is set as high as pie in the sky.

So really out of those "573" jobs you're looking at possibly only 100 that are truly available to you.

Then out of those 100 jobs
1) the prospective candidates who get in through "refer a friend" have a better chance than you,
2) followed by those that look the part and are semi-qualified/experienced, etc.
3) Then remains the jobs which truly need merit where they will hire the right person regardless, out of that pool there will definitely be more than 100 qualified job hunters seeking the same role.

All this ...... if your CV even gets through the automated system. For example I once applied for a job internally at work and asked HR a few days later about my application, they couldn't see my application because the automated CV sorting system filtered out my CV because the automated system didn't find all the "keywords" it was looking for.

I'm not trying to provoke you in any way so take a minute or two to think about responding and do not respond impulsively. I'm going through the motions and am telling you like it is.

I've now got 2 phone interviews lined up so things are looking brighter. A recruiter associate of mine who I've known for a couple of years said to me that when people return from abroad it's not uncommon for them to find it hard to find employment and that a lot take a temporary "downgrade" of job while sorting themselves out. I'm also considering this. I figure some of my applications where rejected when they saw how much I currently earn, I'm saying this because one HR person emailed me saying my application has been rejected due to salary expectations, I responded saying I'd accept £40-50k so now my application is proceeding. So the Silicon Valley thing may repel employers who don't have big budgets.

Dude, at least 90% of jobs in IT are to do with software development, testing, systems admin (and it's variations), DevOps, analysis, the technical part of it, and now there is a rise in Project Management/Business Analyst roles but you only have a tiny number of PM's/BA's per technical role. And the "end systems management" roles and such like that you mentioned make a minority of roles in IT. Then jobs like UI/UX, Product management etc, which most companies have half a handful of. So as far as casting my net wide for the industry I work in I've cast it very very wide, refer to this https://www.paysa.com/blog/2017/07/1...rs-and-titans/

petitefrancaise

I for one, am genuinely interested in your feedback on all of this. It's way too easy for us to sit in our little expat bubbles and not see what is happening back home in the UK.

I am doing my best to make sure that my kids retain the right to live and work on both sides of the Atlantic when they have finished university/college. None of us knows how things will be in 3 years so thanks for your honest feedback inspite of less than encouraging posts from others.

Jack8602

So the other 10% of IT encompasses cloud, infrastructure, networks and all the others

I won't reply anymore because this is a pointless debate based on you viewing software engineering as the whole of IT. Good luck in your search.

Realistic, not non-encouraging.

captainbligh

I don't view software engineering as the whole of IT, how did you come to that conclusion? Dude, I'm a software engineer and as such I focus on software/systems engineering/development roles, which make the bulk of IT jobs. That's what I'm trying to get through to you. I think it's best if you don't reply though because I'm getting the sense you're on the non-technical side and have a hard time grasping the realities of the tech side of the industry. My search is focused on the tech side. The IT industry off course includes management, marketing, sales, systems deployment but that in itself is not the software engineering.

Jack8602

Enjoy the UK