BITE's blog UK Contract Jobs and Career Transition

Referral Opportunities with BITE- £250 per successful person recruited

At BITE we are offering the opportunity for anyone who has been through our jobsearch program to refer successful candidates to us and if they sign up as a BITE contractor and work for at least six weeks successfully we will reward them with £250!

Yes the Contract Market is good at we can still place people into work before Christmas.Infact it constitutes over 40% of advertised jobs in the IT market and a further 50%of jobs are never advertised.

For those that really are interested in helping BITE we intend to reward tjhem with Associate executive status with a chance to earn a significant slice of BITE's profits

More Jobs for the IT crowd in the UK with the right skills!

More than 800,000 IT vacancies were advertised in the third quarter of the year a five percent increase on the previous quarter and well up on last 18 months.

Employment agencies reported a 17% increase in demand for permanent staff and a 20 % rise in contract staff over the same period.

There has been a real surge in IT and and computing vacancies and whilst IT recruitment is still not back to 2006 levels it has recovered sharply.

“Investing in Information and communication technology (ICT) is bouncing back big time and that is having an impact on recruitment,” says Jeff Brooks, chair of the Technology sector group at the REC.

As IT and Computing staff work across the sectors, they also provide a good barometer of what happens across the wider economy. Finance and business services are having the strongest recovery in ICT jobs according to the REC figures, with recruitment up 11% between the second and third quarters last year.

Manufacturing and construction are still suffering.

IT skills in great demand are SQL, PHP, XML, and C# while Extranet, CTI,  Siebel, Coldfusion and Swing where associated with the largest percentage increases  over the third quarter of 40% or more. However C++, DB2, JSP, LAN SOLARIS,UNIX, and older windows 2000 and NT skills were down.

Job advertisements for test analysts increased 27% and Business analysts by 20%.

This data sourced from the REC Technology Sector Group highlights the fact that ITC professionals need to have the right skills that are up to date.

Keith Boatman Managing Director of BITE Consulting Group Ltd. States that “these figures illustrate why they are experiencing a shortage of qualified experienced ICT staff in the contract market”.

In fact at the moment candidates with the right skills can find contract work in the IT market If they position themselves effectively. This situation has been helped by the general reluctance of Australians and New Zealanders to travel over for their “Overseas Experience” for fear of being unable to find work. Here lies the problem bad news on the UK recession travelled quickly but news of the recovery is only trickling back home.

Boatman states “The good news is that those that do travel now to the UK will be able to pick and choose contract positions and earn the best rates before the crowds arrive.” It is clear that anyone with the nerve to RELOCATE NOW will benefit greatly.

Is the Credit Crunch Over for Contractors?

In the UK we are victims of our own facination with bad news in the media and my visits to Australia , South Afrioca and New Zealand have shown me how well we communicate bad news.Well as of January 5th 2010 it's clear that the contract market is becoming vibrant and there is going to be a severe shortage of qualified flexible professionals with good English speaking communication skills.Why because some many people have not traveled over and there is a natural two year cycle of people going home combined with a tightening of immigration rules in the UK.As a result supply is tightening and demand awakening.

I have found that any IT contractor or Finance contractor is in great demand and i'm certain anyone using a professional approach rather than a casual approach to seeking a contract will be successfull in 2010.So come on you Aussie's, Safa's and Kiwi's don't delay your travel plans further and get on that plane! We are officially out of recession as of January 2010.This does not mean we are experiencing a boom in perm jobs,but there is a clear need for temporary and contract staff.

So here is some good news on the UK! Contractors who search for contracts professionally in London and throughout the UK will find lucrative work.(see www.biteconsulting.co.uk for more contract info)

The credit crunch is over i believe the point is will you believe it and travel?