Post
by babunrb » Tue May 12, 2009 7:23 pm
Hi.
This is Babu N R. I have 7+ years experience in Java, J2EE, Struts, Spring and Hibernate. Sun / Oracle certified professional. Have 2 years in SOA. I have 5+ years experience in C++, C# and .NET. Have Microsoft certification too in C# .NET and ASP .NET. 70-536 and the ASP.NET one. Planning to take up WCF/WPF exams soon. Probably in another 4-5 months.
Have been in the UK since 1st November 2008. Mainly focussing on Developer / Sr. Developer or Technical Lead jobs.
I have different resumes to highlight my skills in either Java / C++ / C# .NET, ASP .NET and in some cases I do overlap some skills wherever I find an advantage.
I have accounts with all the big websites like jobserve, jobsite, reed, monstor blah blah. Some 18 different sites.
Tried London, Belfast, Scotland and anywhere in the UK. London is very very competitive. Had a couple of telephonic interviews. Seems it all goes fine. Went to 1 f-f interview. I think I did the interview very well. Second interview they called me for a hands-on test in Manchester. It was 2.5 hrs long. 1 hr Technical written test, 1 hr debugging, half hour discussion on my approach etc.,
3rd Round went to HR interview after 1 week. After that I was told that they found someone with better relevant skills !!!! That too for a salary of £30k+. If they conduct 3 interviews for 30k just imagine. And that too over a period of 2.5 weeks. It takes time to get to interviews and stages between them.
Height of stupidity. Last 2 months market has become very very bad. Here people usually say Apr-June is good. But NOT this year. Competition is also very very extreme. So many people competing for so little jobs. Although mentally I am not exhausted yet. Since I am merely considering the last 6 months as a holiday kind of because I dont have financial issues.
Mar 2009 - May 2009 so far, market has been very very bad. Consultants tell me it is going to continue atleast for 1 more year.
I have taken some alternative approaches - like - downscaling my resume and skillset a bit to tackle lower experience positions. Unfortunately, there too I find people with heavy experience competing against me. And they are Brits, so they are being slightly favoured I feel. Some come with UK experience too.
Contract jobs - no chance to get one. Chicken egg problem on that.
There are some security cleared jobs for which I was not eligible to apply. And I am told I cant get security clearance ever.
Overall, job search has been very bad. And the market situation is also like that. I have some funds parked in my account until another 3-4 months. But honestly, I am not giving myself a penny chance to hit something. But I definitely have a job back in India if I get home by September / October. My ex-boss is starting up after Diwali 09 and has given me the opportunity to consider if I am to come back to Hyderabad. Lets see.
I usually apply to some 20-30 jobs per day. Its a bit tedious for me since I look at .NET c# and java j2ee jobs too.
Usually get 1 or 2 fake calls from consultants to fish my details but by now I can spot them so easily.
Today UK Dept. of Labour and Employment has released statistics that 2.2 million people are unemployed and its already 7.1% here. Worst is that the majority of these are from the highly skilled sectors.
That's my stuff.