time taken to get a job in UK

it took 50 days for me to get my first offer. as far as i am concerned, the worst performed interview gave me the my first offer, weird isnt it

i didnt take my first offer. And the job that i am currently sitting in took 64 days. im in to IT.

Anyone around with Project management experience. How's the situation.

Not bad IF you have experience of 8 years + Prince 2 (F & P), plue point if oyu have PMI CAMP OR pmp, should secure good one in couple of months. Best of luck.

Prince2+PMP+"should secure +couple of months" ????

anything else left????

lolz. I am trying to be more optimistic due to current econmical situations.
You may get interview in one week, but then second interview then third, whole process takes at least a month or so if and only if all recruitment body is in-house not on holidays.

Hope this helps.

Hey Kaff,

I am PMP certified with 11 years of exp, out of this 7 yrs in with stock exchange and 1 year with MNC bank. 4 years in project management.... kindly let me know my chances....

thanks in advance...

Regards

Kaff wrote:lolz. I am trying to be more optimistic due to current econmical situations.
You may get interview in one week, but then second interview then third, whole process takes at least a month or so if and only if all recruitment body is in-house not on holidays.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

I got the HSMP Tier 1 visa which is valid from Nov, 2008. I want to know how is the Job Market in UK for Java/J2EE with EAI Middleware(Websphere Message Broker, MQ and SOA skills) 4+ Exp. One more thing is there any policy like HSMP Tier 1 visa holder must have to travel to UK with in 3 months.


Regards,
Ravi

Hi Guys

I came to UK in these difficult conditions (I came here on 12 Sep 2008). Stayed with my friends in shared accomodation and was able to manage a contract job.

I have 10+ years of experience in IT field (Java/J2EE programming, design). In this I was lucky enough to have UK work experience of 1.2 years in year 2004. Also my last client when I worked from India was also a UK client, where I worked for 8 months.

When I first came to UK (I was staying in Luton, near London), I started applying through websites like cwjobs, jobserve, jobsite, totaljobs. I didn't get any reponse for the whole first week. I was really frustrated, since in India (Bangalore) the moment I apply I used to get atleast 10 calls the next day. At this moment I changed my resume to highlight my UK experience and put my last project as if I was working in UK (though I mostly worked in India for this UK client, I travelled several times as short trips to UK for this).

The 2nd week, I started getting calls, just enquiring my details and my position. They kept asking how to do you find the UK market etc. Better to tell them though market seems down you are confident of getting a job. At the end of 2nd week I got my first interview scheduled for a contract job.

They didn't ask much technical questions, but only my role in the project and some minor tech questions. This was just a 20 min. telephonic interview and I got through in this. Hurrah

There will be more calls to permanent jobs than contract and permanent jobs take more time to get through, since there will be atleast 3-4 rounds of interview, including a test where they will ask you to write code, Junit (Unit Testing). It will take a minimum of 1 month to get to know any result. I was also scheduled for 2 permanent job interviews. As part of this I completed 2 brainbench certification as requested , J2EE and JSP. But I took this contract job as they pay more and it was fast and easy to get through.

The tough part in contract jobs is to get an interview. They are very fussy about the exact technology required. Your resume should have all the keywords that they are looking for. Basically these recruiters themselves have no knowledge technically and search only for the keywords. So fill ur resume with all the keywords (if ur confident on these) that they require. as I know working on Agile methodolgy is almost a must here. Others in demand are SOA, WebServices, XML, Spring, Hibernate, struts, JSP and other UI techs like AJAX, HTML, JQuery, CSS, JavaScript

So the bottom line is, if you have good experience (depends from 5-10 years), you are ready to take some risk, and have atleast 1 yr of UK work experience, then there is a chance of getting job. But just dont go by my success within 2 weeks. You may need to wait for 1-2 months (or even more). As a matter of fact this is the only contract interview I was able to manage for another 2 weeks after I got this contract. So it is tough now but not impossible

Regards
Shashi

Hi ravi_ishere007
What are you upto? I got Tier-1 stamped from 01,Nov,2008 for 3 years. Not able to make a decision as when to move to UK after hearing to the recession news poured into ears from Media.
Do you have any clues on exact market Trend? Any ways, dont plan to go to UK till Dec,31 as there wont be any recruitment by companies during this year end season.
But I am expecting to land in UK by 1st week of Jan. Still my friends who are in UK suggesting me to come down earlier as one needs some time to settle things like..accommodation,Bank Account opening, NIN Number Etc.
By the way, I am also with 5+ J2EE exp. Lets see whats in store ofr us!

Thanks
Mohan

Hello All,

I am planning to apply for tier 1 in jan 09 and then move to UK in feb or march 09. I wanted everyones opinion on job market for Messaging Specialists (Exchange consultant/Exchange Admin) jobs?

Regards
Jedi001

Read bbc.co.uk, other UK based daily and Business related news (worldwide), you will get the idea of job market.

i was warned by a few members here... but still it is disappointing when you dont get much interview calls either.. life sucks man.

i did my prince2, pmp and looked for pm jobs with 8 plus years experience man.

and worst also tried for architect positions in java-j2ee, hibernate-spring-xml etc.,.. also tried c++, c# and .net...

its been 4.5 months no jobs.. not even a single offer. i had few calls over phone and answered everything correct...but why wont they give me an offer... i repent letting go of my job in india seriously. have already spent 8 lakhs so far.

i want to ask you guys - how is the IT scenario in india.. its been 6 months since i quit my job in india... can i find one if i come back to india by jan 09??

with all the money gone to tier1 visa, and living expense here.. i need to start earning from india for atleast 6 months so i can try again by july 09 or later... what do you guys suggest ?

Really sorry to hear your story. I'm in NZ and planning to move to UK in Feb09. Hopefully the market will improve close to the financial year end and the begining of the new financial year. (March/April09)

I strongly believe that the market will definitely improve for the better as it closes to the Olympics in London. There will be a lot of money pumped in from overseas for the Olympics. Hence, creating opportunities throughout various industry sectors (IT, Banking, Health, etc)

Don't loose hope buddy...
have you tried picking up short-term contracts? Or maybe petty call-centre jobs (just to stay within the country and earn your basics) while you lookout for a good job offer.

ghulbhai wrote:i was warned by a few members here... but still it is disappointing when you dont get much interview calls either.. life sucks man.

i did my prince2, pmp and looked for pm jobs with 8 plus years experience man.

and worst also tried for architect positions in java-j2ee, hibernate-spring-xml etc.,.. also tried c++, c# and .net...

its been 4.5 months no jobs.. not even a single offer. i had few calls over phone and answered everything correct...but why wont they give me an offer... i repent letting go of my job in india seriously. have already spent 8 lakhs so far.

i want to ask you guys - how is the IT scenario in india.. its been 6 months since i quit my job in india... can i find one if i come back to india by jan 09??

with all the money gone to tier1 visa, and living expense here.. i need to start earning from india for atleast 6 months so i can try again by july 09 or later... what do you guys suggest ?

This is easier said than done. I suppose the real test is the next 3-6 months as the current economic climate is in limbo.

custodian wrote:Really sorry to hear your story. I'm in NZ and planning to move to UK in Feb09. Hopefully the market will improve close to the financial year end and the begining of the new financial year. (March/April09)

I strongly believe that the market will definitely improve for the better as it closes to the Olympics in London. There will be a lot of money pumped in from overseas for the Olympics. Hence, creating opportunities throughout various industry sectors (IT, Banking, Health, etc)

Don't loose hope buddy...
have you tried picking up short-term contracts? Or maybe petty call-centre jobs (just to stay within the country and earn your basics) while you lookout for a good job offer.

ghulbhai wrote:i was warned by a few members here... but still it is disappointing when you dont get much interview calls either.. life sucks man.

i did my prince2, pmp and looked for pm jobs with 8 plus years experience man.

and worst also tried for architect positions in java-j2ee, hibernate-spring-xml etc.,.. also tried c++, c# and .net...

its been 4.5 months no jobs.. not even a single offer. i had few calls over phone and answered everything correct...but why wont they give me an offer... i repent letting go of my job in india seriously. have already spent 8 lakhs so far.

i want to ask you guys - how is the IT scenario in india.. its been 6 months since i quit my job in india... can i find one if i come back to india by jan 09??

with all the money gone to tier1 visa, and living expense here.. i need to start earning from india for atleast 6 months so i can try again by july 09 or later... what do you guys suggest ?

Ghulbhai,
Sorry to hear about ur experiences.

The UK job market can be very weird(I am sure you have read the experiences of other boarders regarding their job search experiences).


Last few months have been bad for job seekers. I think conditions will improve in Jan-09 for short term. Till then I donot see any movement in the market.
You will find it easier to find a job in India for your skills.


Getting a PMs job in UK has always been difficult,even in good times,for somebody with no previous UK experience.

Even in Jan, finding an architect's job is going to be challenging, unless you take all the correct steps.


Sorry for my pessimistic outlook but I hope that these warnings will do good for some people.
My advice to all people coming to UK is to think hard - UK doesn't have much to offer to new comers for atleast next 2-3 years. I believe things are only going to get worse.
The assumtion that things will get better in the next few months can be devastating for many people's careers.
I see absolutely no chance for job mkt to rebound in 2009. I see 2009 as the worst year in 3-4 decades for job seekers.

Please do not delude yourselves regarding coming to the UK and getting a job. Unless you have a job to step straight into you are going to struggle.

The UK job market is on its knees, there will not be any improvement for upwards of 9 to 12 months and that is a conservative estimate. For those that lived through the last slump in the 1990's it takes two years to get to the bottom of the slump and about the same to climb back out.

Watch the house prices in the UK as the best indicator especially in the South East of England - once they stop dropping then the slump has abated. They are still dropping by a couple of percent a month at the moment so there is still a long way to the bottom.

Frontier Mole wrote:Please do not delude yourselves regarding coming to the UK and getting a job. Unless you have a job to step straight into you are going to struggle.

The UK job market is on its knees, there will not be any improvement for upwards of 9 to 12 months and that is a conservative estimate. For those that lived through the last slump in the 1990's it takes two years to get to the bottom of the slump and about the same to climb back out.

Watch the house prices in the UK as the best indicator especially in the South East of England - once they stop dropping then the slump has abated. They are still dropping by a couple of percent a month at the moment so there is still a long way to the bottom.

I think for sure, there is nothing to be gained at the end of the year. Companies will not hire in order to meet budget and of course are laying off Beginning next year, with new budgets and a clean slate there will be hiring but you will have to be here to take advantage of it and again people need to avoid cities like london. There is too much competition here and its more expensive, go to other cities if you want to have a chance. If you just got a visa and you want to use it, you can't very well expect a renewal if you dont work and there is no way you will find work in the UK unless you are here. Take advantage of the downturn, find really inexpensive places to live and set yourself up so you get a good deal and then hit the pavement hard at the beginning of the year.

Ghulbhai, Am sorry to hear your story.To put things in perspective rightway, if you were in a project management role in India and expect that you will move over to UK with a similar profile and quadruple your income, then you are completely mistaken.PM is quite a niche area over there and people normally get to that role slowly unlike in India where employers are just looking to groom their employess into a managerial role to manage the growing workforce.. Whether or not they possess the skills is another matter:)..So you will have to compromise here and there before you slowly shape your careerin UK.

Coming to your question on job market in India, it is good but not terrific as the media is making it out to be.. We are dependant on the west, so any problem over there is bound to have an effect here.. Hiring is affected slightly and HR is letting people go without caring much about notice period or any bond restrictions.. but what I feel (in my reputed MNC company) is that the quality of work has deteriorated over time.. I am an IT consultant working in a niche software area and even though projects are available, I think most are full-on crap. Companies only want to bag contracts without thinking much about the quality of work and aspirations of the employees. This is what drives me crazy here.. and I think all the news about hiring on full-scale is either a) to appease the market or b) to convince clients that their business is booming and get more contracts or c) as a buffer to keep consultants ready in case they bag a multi million dollar project. Inside story is that there are not many projects available and most companies are just adopting a wait n watch approach. At least I am quite frustrated but the recession is making me take calculated steps and delay my tier1 process ..

I would suggest taking a month or two off and heading back home(you are not going to get any offers around christmas/new year anyway plus you might just feel refreshed if you come back and meet friends/releatives etc.). I was in UK for two years and I know how good it feels to be back with your family once in a while. Dont think that u will get a job rightaway if you come here at the moment. Companies are extending working hours, forcing people to go on mandatory 10 day unpaid holidays and such stuff and its still a good 15 days to christmas so I don't know what else is in store.. Still much better than in the UK if you still want to come and try. Another option is to take up a part-time day job in UK itself, but I guess even that would be a prized catch becos everyone would be looking for one around this time!!

Dont worry mate. This is a tough time that you and others have to weather. Hopefully the new year sees some rebound in the job market..

take care

Stay put if you are outside UK. The ground situation isn't that rosy in UK.

Has anyone who has got their Tier-1 after Oct-2008, been able to land a job in UK?

Requesting such people to share their job search strategies with all who are already in UK and looking for job or planning to go there in next 1-2 months.

suds19 wrote:Has anyone who has got their Tier-1 after Oct-2008, been able to land a job in UK?

Requesting such people to share their job search strategies with all who are already in UK and looking for job or planning to go there in next 1-2 months.

yeah ..this should be a different section altogether. people who already got jobs could tell any information (to the extent they are comfortable revealing) they want to share..
Lets not stop at the tier1 application itself.. thats a small step..the big deal is getting a job.. so everyone will benefit from personal experiences....

5 months now.. looking for a job since september middle.

now given up. no money
no hope
no phone calls from consultants nor companies
no recovery in britain
had saved 400 pounds for my gulf air flight to india. had even changed my 300 dollars travellers cheque which i had saved since 2005 to extend my stay for 2 more weeks.

but now the decision is made, going home to India.

ghulbhai wrote:5 months now.. looking for a job since september middle.

now given up. no money
no hope
no phone calls from consultants nor companies
no recovery in britain
had saved 400 pounds for my gulf air flight to india. had even changed my 300 dollars travellers cheque which i had saved since 2005 to extend my stay for 2 more weeks.

but now the decision is made, going home to India.

Ghul bhai,

I observe that almost in everythread you are desperately posting comments on the hardship of getting a job to the extent of telling people not to come to UK.

While I fully empathise with your situation, I certainly feel, every individual has his own traits and skills which differ from the others.
First please let us know what is your situation. How many years of experience you have in the industry. Wats your domain of working been all these years in IT. How you have tried looking for a job..

raghu,

i have 8+ years dev experience. Have worked as an architect and PM earlier. Have prince 2, PMP certifications. ASP.NET, C#, C++ MFC, SQL Server.

tried companies and consultants. there are plenty of jobs, but fake jobs, when you call them, they say they will go through your cv and wont call back.

i write because 6 months back people didnt warn me of a detiriorating situation. anyway, you are your own judge. if you trust - you take it, or you come in person to the UK to see things yourself.

im not the authority to approve your flight do i ? just a piece of advice to a fellow indian. when did indians trust each other ?

ya situation has detiorated worldwide.but this forum has been helpful earlier also so i trust the answers here and will plan according as still we(me and my husband)have time till june to move from germany.