IT professions in Demand in UK

coolguyIndia · Post by **coolguyIndia** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:26 pm

Hello all,

Calling all experienced IT professionals currently working in UK to share their experience on current job scene in IT industry in UK and professions within IT industry that are in demand according to them.

Guys let us keep this forum for useful information sharing.....

Thanks to all contributors in advance....

Regards

ubugger · Post by **ubugger** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:06 pm

No where at the moment. Possibly best to stay whereever you are and work for another 4 months.Maybe after xmas, if you are lucky, the market will have recovered. IT is taking a massive hit at the moment. Unless you've got 10 years experience in certain specialised areas, then you won't get a job, because there's plenty of people already here with that experience.

To be honest, the market is bad. The really good ones get jobs easily, the average ones are in the pit with the rest... not gettings jobs.

namastelondon · Post by **namastelondon** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:39 pm

Yeah ubugger is right. Earlier i felt that market was bad but still guys can search job. Now there are lot of layoff happening and market will change. Even if somebody comes now and if it takes him 2-3 months to search and hiring will be less along year end. IF someone want to come , then try to schedule some interviews form ur home country and then take this step.

Kaff · Post by **Kaff** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 11:32 am

Stay where you are!!! Finacial market is wrost and not sure how badly it will impact other sectors. Due to Lahman bro bankrupcy 5000 skilled and un-employed are on road, which will fill up gap in market quicky with their skills. So for new comers sorry to say very slim chance to get a kick start job. Despite all HOPE for the best and keep trying if you can afford.

Kaff · Post by **Kaff** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:05 pm

This might give you idea
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7620451.stm

maheshrvce · Post by **maheshrvce** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:50 am

Well,
I think these only apply to financial/banking related professions. I dont see any slump in mobile phone/technology related areas where demand is very high and there are very few ppl. If u r one of those u should not find it difficult to geta job within a month even now

ubugger · Post by **ubugger** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 5:46 pm

Are you honestly being serious?
Where do you think all the financial people will go? Everyone knows wages are lower in telco too. The market has PLENTY of telco workers, but not enough of them have lots of years experience. And it's also important in telco to have uk experience, so you can understand the products, etc they are trying to to sell. I work in telco and my company is doing cost cutting now, in fact lots of them are. Vodafone outsources lots to eds! So i'd be very careful now. Especially when the market is focussing on cost.

maheshrvce · Post by **maheshrvce** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:49 pm

ubugger, let me give u a small analogy between these to make u understand better. If you say you r a banker u r either accountant or an investment banker or a risk analyst or blah blah but the list is very limited. If u say u r a telecom engineer there could be endless things u could have done and endless technologies u could have worked on. So u always have something for u somewhere. Moreover if here is a recession all banks could get screwed but u know what my dear friend Cisco is still making profits this slump period is just another day for them. Agree with outsourcing but do u think these big banks are opening offices in Asia for no reason? low cost is not the only thing, there business can only expand if it comes to asia. Hope u got the point

ubugger · Post by **ubugger** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:58 pm

Not really, no....

I get your point, but being in IT in banking is the same as IT anywhere. Then again, there's business analysts, project managers, team leaders, customer service roles, etc. There's a small number of roles that don't translate into other jobs, like investment banking forecaster... but that doesn't mean they can't do other roles. Lots of people have qualifications like computer science or computer engineer and they can do lots of jobs... Just like BA's, they can go back to being developers if they like (or if they started there)... I personally know people who've been hit by this and they are looking all over for jobs, because really, even a job in a Curry's is better than no job at all.

To be honest and fair, if you are UK born and UK educated you have a much higher chance of landing a job. People DO rate that and it's at these times that it matters most to have years of experience and education in the UK. Say if it comes down to 2 people who are equal, one has been to Uni here and the other was *anywhere* else, often you'll find them choosing the UK educated person.

In your example you compare a banker (really, it's a limited subset of skills, however there's HEAPS of companies out there who will have jobs for you) to a telecom engineer. Telecoms engineering is being outsourced more and more to the companies who run the systems, HP, Alcatel, etc and these are being outsourced more and more to companies like Wipro. Roles that don't 'represent' companies are becoming fewer and fewer.

Take a business analysis for example, if you are in Finance or Telecoms the principals are the same and companies want business analysis in-house quite often as this minimises risk to the company. Outsourcing a BA is a bad idea. It DOES get done though.

Companies like Cisco are still making money on maintenance contracts, etc. There's things that must be done still after implementation. However when companies buy 'Cisco' products it's always VERY very earlier in the project as the infrastructure is the first part to be implemented. You'll find that Cisco's profit will go down, but it'll take longer only because everyone has spent the infrastructure money SO far in advance.

Asia expansions are excellent for cutting costs. Asia is coming up as a very cheap way to outsource too, just like India is/was. Businesses want market share and they get that in asia. They want lower costs too, they get that there as well. When I say 'lower' I mean lower than the UK, US, Australia, etc. The savings of outsourcing are becoming less and less, however companies still keep increasing the amount of it, because there's a sole person/company they can point at when something big does go wrong. Lehman's will blame sub prime and their credit rating, we'll blame the bankers who took the risks without thinking about the consequences.

Anyway, i'd suggest if you want to come to the UK, come, but seriously, you could be without a job for a very long time unless you are really good and very experienced. But still, it depends on what you want to earn. Cost of living is higher here but there's a lot of lower paid jobs out there. I consider 45k (Pounds) to be a good salary, there's not many 'good' salaries by my standard here at the moment and there's less and less every day. I saw a business analyst role for 20k-23k (pounds) the other day. They wanted someone with 3yrs + experience, etc. Which is an absolute joke. Still, if you want to come, come! Right now, it's not a good time. Especially as christmas is coming up.

maheshrvce · Post by **maheshrvce** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:54 am

Of course I agree with ur second part (christmas less jobs...) but I dont quite understand ur uk exposure thingy. Dude if you are working for a big company which is known all over the world and u know what u have done then obviously u have an edge over an uk born/uk educated guy who is working for some not very well known company. Atleast I have seen this in my case. And coming to the reputation I would say working for a company like wipro, infy looks good only in india- not in the western countries where some ppl even wouldnt have heard those names.Well I dont mean to offend anybody who works for these either because all my friends work for one of them. Atleast I see a lot of openings even now and no ppl .
Neways u cant generalize saying some things would work for everyone. Its all my personal thoughts.

gotcha · Post by **gotcha** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:55 am

Service industry is major portion where IT people(incuding telecom) are employed. When there is turbulance in on sector, it has cascading effect on other sectors as well. that is capitalism.

5000 staff of Lehman is jobless in instance. But that shakes economy in big way. These 5000 people will reduce their spending affecting all sectors. And these 5000 peoples are not only on tightening belt. And remember When said bankiing sector , it comprises huge IT employment.
And telecom sector is no different, it's driven by consumer spending, isn't it.

maheshrvce wrote: Dude if you are working for a big company which is known all over the world and u know what u have done then obviously u have an edge over an uk born/uk educated guy who is working for some not very well known company.

Who said that ? Recruitment is totally requirement driven. One can understand , why people living in UK(or born) for long period are preferred. Its not about supriority. But about awareness about local terms,limbo. I can see how my manager(british) stuggle to understand what I'm(non-british) saying or vice-versa.

jhp · Post by **jhp** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:33 pm

The job market is no good for IT folks at the moment. I changed jobs around the same time in 2006 and I am also looking for a job now because there might be job cuts in my company. There is a lot of differnce between now and then and the biggest being there are a few job opening but there a lot of people searching for jobs. In addtion to people being made redundant ,most contractors have had their contracts terminated or their contracts have not been renewed. So in the current job market the amount of jobs available are a fraction of that in 2006 with a lot of people competing. The UK job market has been very competetive in the best of time.No matter what you say you do need Uk experience and for certain jobs they prefer UK citizens especially ones where you have to be SC cleared. To be honest they dont give a damn if you have been working for a Big organization recognized world over. Ive noticed and read in several forums that some people from India have been very disappointed after working in some really well known companies that sometimes recruiters have not been very impressed. Unless you have a niche skill these are difficult times. I know it because I am hunting for a job.Anybody who is a secure job should stay put in your jobs/country I would say.

molsang · Post by **molsang** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:12 pm

Guys, IT Job market is not so bad for Oracle DBAs. My friend got a Permanent Job Offer on Aug (video conferencing f2f) end from India and flown to Scotland n Sep 2nd week.
My another friend who is in UK and of same skill set got a contract job in 1st week of Sep. I am currently in USA and posted my resume to jobsites and applied to few jobs to check my CV standard. I got two 1st round telephonic interview calls from direct client. And both are asking me to come UK for f2f 2nd round interviews. Direct Employers bother to call US even I applied casually.
What all these means? Is IT Job market really too bad ?

jhp · Post by **jhp** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:03 pm

molsang wrote:Guys, IT Job market is not so bad for Oracle DBAs. My friend got a Permanent Job Offer on Aug (video conferencing f2f) end from India and flown to Scotland n Sep 2nd week.
My another friend who is in UK and of same skill set got a contract job in 1st week of Sep. I am currently in USA and posted my resume to jobsites and applied to few jobs to check my CV standard. I got two 1st round telephonic interview calls from direct client. And both are asking me to come UK for f2f 2nd round interviews. Direct Employers bother to call US even I applied casually.
What all these means? Is IT Job market really too bad ?

I did say " Unless you have a niche skill these are difficult times. ". Obviously you can also hear and believe what you choose to hear and believe. I have been in the Uk for around 4 years so I do believe I do know when things are bad. Can I also add things took a bad turn only from the first week of September first with Zoom airlines going bust, then travel firm XL, then with Lehmans and then with HBOS merging with Lloyds TSB. Anybody reading the news would know that with Lehmans 5000 jobs in London have gone down the drain and with HBOS merging with Lloyds around 40,000 jobs all over the UK gone down. Obviosuly not all jobs in IT. However can I also say Barclays and 2 other banks have a recruitement freeze for IT, some of the banks have terminated several IT contracting jobs. BA downsized few weeks back and around 700 IT jobs have been cut (some of it with an indian company). As I said earlier you can choose to hear and believe what you want to and hence make your own decisions.....

ramesh1 · Post by **ramesh1** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:36 am

molsang how many years of experiance you and your friend have and what is the platform windows/linux - oracle DBA skills? If that is what is good to fetch a job i would rather try to learn those skills before i reach UK in the month of Jan. Now its october and how do you feel now still getting interview calls from UK to US?Your input will be highly appreciated for people like me who is waiting for Tier-1 visa.

shashi545 · Post by **shashi545** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:56 pm

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

asthra · Post by **asthra** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:07 pm

Thanks for your insights Shashi! Your post really helps.

filohet · Post by **filohet** » Sat Jun 22, 2013 10:17 am

Its really a nice one that you have written here about you have changed the resume headline with India to UK.
So its do prove that many recruiter believe that if the person is working in UK or USA he/she is very good. They give more preference to that person rather then work..

tier1-immigrant · Post by **tier1-immigrant** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:44 pm

Any comments on the current job market ? Finding it very difficult.

I see many many requirements on the job sites but not getting calls.
Not sure how many of those requirements are genuine.
Some times recruitment agencies post jobs for some future anticipated requirement and some time just to collect CVs to know from us where are the openings so that they can grab the opportunity.

There shd be some regulation on recruitment agency some thing like, if they are posting a requirement, they shd be able to prove that is a genuine requirement.

tier2user · Post by **tier2user** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:04 pm

See, it all starts from the visa category. As of now in UK, there is only Tier2 visa for immigrants and If you are on tier2, you do not have to worry about the job market because you already have a job offer and you enter to UK and start working

few visa categories are no longer available, check with UKBA site

If you were on tier1(HSMP) and did not visit UK, then you can come down and search job as there are jobs for an experienced person and you know the skill set also matters. See i was in the same position on HSMP without having knowledge about job market and I was able to find a job. All I can say is there are jobs for the right candidate,right skill set,right visa category

--John

pierregrima123 · Post by **pierregrima123** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 12:45 pm

Search for the latest UK IT jobs & career opportunities at or sign up to our Jobs By Email service and get all the latest IT jobs straight to your inbox.
Kick start your next career in IT by using the keyword and location search box above or why not upload your CV and let IT recruiters find you.

Wanderer · Post by **Wanderer** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 1:25 pm

pierregrima123 wrote:Search for the latest UK IT jobs & career opportunities at or sign up to our Jobs By Email service and get all the latest IT jobs straight to your inbox.
Kick start your next career in IT by using the keyword and location search box above or why not upload your CV and let IT recruiters find you.

Not your site is it?

Post by **Casa** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:19 pm

Hmm. Spidey senses tingling? Self-promoting links removed.

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