UK IT job searching broken

Job searching, or the reverse Hiring, is always broken, depending on the market mood. This is baked into all industries and comes down to supply and demand.

At this point in the cycle, the supply overwhelms demand. So naturally lots of people are not having success, and so the system is broken in that direction.

The best advice I can give is that in an up-cycle find a place that you like to work at, that likely pays less than big tech, that hires slowly and fires slower. Dig in, and build a long career there. Stop job hopping. Job hoppers are very vulnerable to market mood.

Of course that's useless advice now and will be mostly ignored in an upcycle when FANG is throwing FANG money around.

In a down cycle my advice is to stand out from the crowd. Do something that gives you a leg up. Show an employer some initiative, creativity, work ethic etc.

We need something like this again. It's ridiculous to expect new applicants to have every minor skill covered, so I do understand the government offering the minimum viable candidate - training juniors needs to be a thing again.

thank you.

Oh, I know your pain all too well. As a fellow UK dev that spent the last year or so looking for a new job before finding one, the market here is absolutely brutal for developers and software engineers. As you said yourself, the majority of roles seem to be fake (or not taken seriously), the few that do interview do a poor job of it and then if you're lucky you'll find one of the few jobs that are actually real at the end of it.

My advice would be as follows:

1. If you can leave the UK, do so. I hate to say it, but it feels like the economy here is just getting worse by the day, and the cost of living is ridiculous compared to the wages companies are trying to pay. Not sure where to recommend though, the US is currently in political meltdown and many other parts of the world pay rather low wages in this field as well.

2. Don't be afraid to take a temporary pay cut, or go for a job that's beneath you for a while. The hiring situation in tech is an absolute car crash at the moment, and companies aren't exactly throwing crazy FAANG level money around in most situations. Best to find a way to stay off the market for a few years or so until the situation corrects itself.

3. Avoid relying too much on job listing sites in general. The majority of listings there are either fake, dupes or flooded with applications to the point hardly anyone gets noticed. If you have a network, that's the best way to get hired, but recruiters and direct applications to companies are likely the 2nd and 3rd best options right now.

4. Be willing to accept roles outside of the company too. Yes a lot of companies only hire remote in their region, but some don't, and those could be pay better/offer better conditions than UK based ones.

I've had enough of the UK.

I'm leaving to start a startup on the Isle of Man. A wonderful island between England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It's also a tax haven many UK style taxes just don't exist there and the GDP/Standard of living is a lot better -> See you tube. 6th safest country in the world. Beautiful place.

We are looking for c# .NET Core developers up-to about 50K GDP initially + pension, relocation. We're doing some hot development with AI, Voice, ollama, llama, whisper etc. Willing for bright people to join us who can learn on the job and grow with the company.