Before I give details on my specific experience, I just want to state that in the course of the past 2 months, some major consultancies have begun hiring. 4 of my current colleagues have also got new roles - 2 of them just being in the UK for over a year now. 1 got in Ops and another in SOA design/development. Another 2 have secured good contracts - one in BI in London and another in QA up North.
Plus as part of my hunt I realize that there are still quite a few roles and with signs of the market picking up now - DONT give up hope, you can do it
Finally, I guess I am at the liberty of giving a few details of my experience of hunting for a change and move up the pecking order in my specific area of expertise.
So this is what I did first
1. Had been constantly working on my resume - reading, editing, looking at job roles specific to my experience and capturing key words required etc. Proof read a million times and finally fit 7 yrs exp with enough detail inside 3 pages - this included qualifications, summary of work done, achievements etc
2. Did not post my CV publicly - looked for specific roles and applied for 4 in total. Also went on to each of the major IT Consultancy Companies, registered my account and looked through more than 1000 roles in total, opened them and read very clearly if I actually was a fit for these openings. It is very well known that good companies just blacklist CVs that pop up in every single role - meaning, the candidate is blindly applying for the roles
3. Waited patiently to see what happened next
This started in July and within 2 weeks, 3 of the 4 shortlisted me and scheduled first round interviews. All 3 went well - 2 called for the next and final rounds while I never heard back from the other.
I opted out of one of these because they were just paying me few Ks more than what I get now and it made no sense. They did have a massive bonus package of 50% of total pay but it dint convince me to proceed with the interview. Decided to go just with 1 company for the final round, which went very well and I was made an offer. While I could have haggled for a LOT more, I respect the fact that the company has given me an amazing role, opened many new domains for me to get into and, most importantly, a 55% pay hike - I did not want to seem greedy and ask for more
End Result - I will be joining them shortly once I relocate, plan my holidays etc but I would like to once again state that with hard work, a good profile and excellent communication skills securing a job is not difficult. Do your homework well, apply ONLY for roles you are confident of and work on your CV a million times before applying for any role. I have been spending an hour every weekend for almost 6 months honing my CV and, as per me, making it just perfect to showcase and sell ME
Wish everyone the very best and wish you guys all the luck - we all know that there are jobs but we never get PICKED.
Preliminary work around making your profile stand out is even more difficult than the actual interview because that holds the KEY. Once you are actually shortlisted for an interview, your biggest worry is over because you then have a chance to showcase and sell yourself during the actual interviews - this is something YOU can control and the result of which is in YOUR hands. The biggest problem in the first place is just getting picked from a pool of 100s of candidates - and that's where you need to spend a lot of time on.
KP
