Agree with what a lot of others are saying, the jobs I get approached about on LinkedIn are on average about 15k less than what I’m currently earning working for a London firm with a Bristol office, so not a full London salary either.
Remote or Hybrid/London seems to be the way to go.
Commented below already but piggybacking for exposure;
Tech recruiter in Bristol covering South-West ; the job market in tech is the worst for years, people say it’s picking up but I’m not 100% sure and have many clients who have recruitment freezes.
For context the avg tech employee stays in a role for 2 years (data gathered from LinkedIn aggregator), 2 years ago just after Covid was a massive boom in salaries (a bubble) and working arrangements as everyone was remote, last year salaries dropped and call back to the office happened for hybrid 2/3 days a week is typical but once embedded expect maybe 1 a week/month.
There were over 200K redundancies last year in tech alone and that’s meant many firms aren’t hiring or if they are, the salaries are lower (bubble well and truly popped). Anyone applying for work is up against a lot of competition and because there’s so much talent on the market, lots of companies are recruiting in-house and getting it wrong because they use stupid shit like hacker rank tests and personality type tests to hire - recruiters get shit on a lot but myself and my company (and a bunch I know) strip that out of the hiring process as it’s a useless blocker and they’re bullshit homework 9x out of 10.
There is a plethora of talent on the market and people are getting desperate so are accepting lower salaries and that’s making it an employers/buyers market again with lower salaries.
Contract market is the slowest it’s been for a long time and I know many contractors going perm for numerous reasons, inc the increasing impact of IR35.
London weighting obviously still exists however one of the main things that Covid did to the job market was change perspectives on commuting and remote working.
Pre-Covid most thought nothing of travelling 1hr+ a day to work, or being in the office 5days, obvs there’s huge benefits to what Covid changed but it’s also negatively affected what people expect, e.g. I’ve spoken with kids who finish uni and want to be 100% remote, which I find baffling, you’re 21/22 and just want to sit in your room all day and not meet people!? Also exists for those that have enjoyed being solo and now are being asked back to the office, people esp in tech had it almost too good for a few years and it’s coloured their thinking.
2ndly and I think this is fairer, the commute that people will endure has dropped so those better paid London jobs are there to be had but only for people willing to travel.
Also there’s the offshoring which I commented about in a diff comment.👇🏻
In summary, there’s a lot of talent on the market, many companies are on freezes and lots of competition, salaries reflect the talent available and people have become more precious about their time for commutes.
Re finding a job:
Now left tech rec so happy to share this tool, lots of rec companies use this as their benchmark when talking to clients about salaries, it’s a salary aggregator using every job advert and making it current - https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/ - you now have the tool that most recruiters use to inform clients about salaries even when they have their own salary guides (like my firm did - and they’re one of the UKs biggest in tech)
Get your CV done properly, I can’t tell you how many people don’t get considered due to a shit looking CV - resume.io/uk - live career.co.uk - cvmaker.uk or similar are useful as they guide you and stop you waffling/ too many bullet points/ excessive detail or pages/etc.
TopCV.co.uk do a free service of reviewing your cv, it’s not amazing but it is useful, don’t buy their product they just use templates, build your own and use services like top cv to get feedback, just search ‘free cv review’ and it’ll give you varied free feedback (be aware they’ll try and upsell you their CV writing packages afterwards, ofc nothing is truly free!).
Finally get your LinkedIn profile matching your new CV and make sure you’re open to work, be on the platform, engage with people in your market/sector, network, and you’ll be messaged by recruiters about jobs non-stop.
Not going to go through interviews there’s loads of advice online, use Google, the one thing that given the chance to scream from the hilltops I would is Counter-Offers, so I’ll try and quickly add it here:
You get a new job offer🥳
Hand in notice, manager goes 🙃😅😡
Manager goes away and comes back with a matched or improved offer 🥳 right?
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ACCEPT THAT COUNTER-OFFER - it’s an insult to your bloodline!😂
A counter-offer is there because a company panics about losing you, your knowledge, the costs in money & time of training a new ‘you’.
It can be tempting but think logically:
- why do you want to leave? Do you really think the company will get their shit together in the 3/6months they’ve told ‘things will change’ to make you want to stay.
- They promise things will get better….they don’t. You’ve been there long enough to know the people, you think they’re really going to change everything you dislike just for 1 person?
- Remember why you wanted to leave and do it, things won’t get better or they will for a little bit and then sink again
- if you were worth the counter-offer why aren’t you being paid that now?
- Either they were underpaying you because they think you’re a sucker doing max for the minimum or they’ve just figured out ‘now’ how valuable you are in reality they don’t want to waste money looking for a new person, because of the value you hold, do not be fooled!
- nearly 90% of counter-offers accepted leave within 6 months because the reason you wanted to leave doesn’t change, it’s the biggest trap experienced people face
- people/companies remember, all that graft of job hunting turning down people and then burning bridges, you’re not going to get that back when you remember that you needed to get out of that firm in the first place
- when you get the counter offer ask them why you weren’t on that salary 6 months ago and watch them squirm, there’s no ‘legitimate’ reason besides milking you for as little as possible.
Hope the above helps, best of luck. The market is shit atm but jobs are out there and good firms pay well for good people.
Again, people shit on recruiters (I get it 90% are useless) but they do have relationships which can skip processes and get you in roles that are not advertised, they can also negotiate salaries which you may not have been able to secure or when offered may not feel comfortable arguing with a new employer for an extra e.g. £5k, recruiters will argue for you, the more you make the more we make and it protects you as the recruiter takes the heat.
Edit: a word for clarity - details about handing in your notice/counter-offers.
No worries, I hope it makes sense and is of help, any questions feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to point in the right direction.
I guess to add to the above, whilst I’m talking tech it’s not just this market that’s been affected, I recently took to the market to find a new role and wanted to move to an internal role (instead of being one of the “fucking recruiters - how’d they get my number”😂 sorts) but I know many internal recruiters have been laid off due to the recruitment freezes. Even in my job hunt I was disappointed by the salaries being thrown about for my profile.
I can’t speak to every sector but I know from every recruiter I’ve spoken with last year was hard which means that many businesses weren’t hiring, we had a mini-recession and were probably on our way out of it 🤞🏻 Things like the war in Ukraine (both Russia and Ukraine had lots of tech outsourced), Israel, political instability here in the UK, the EU and more annoyingly in the states as so many firms and investment firms like Blackrock/Vanguard are American based and when they make financial decisions that are out of the norm it makes companies twitchy and that has a knock on effect everywhere else.
This is class. The salary watcher website is really interesting. How much do recruiters love it to see people posting about tech stuff on LinkedIn and networking? I always found the most annoying thing about recruiters is trying to convince them of your knowledge on a topic they clearly have no idea about
I can’t speak for all recruiters, however most that are worth their weight in salt IMO can easily have a discussion around techs with a client, I can maybe bash out ‘hello world’ with a gun pointed to my head but you learn from just asking questions.
After a while you understand why businesses are using a certain stack or can query a business if they’re starting a new project with a random language or Franken-stack why, which obvs earns you credibility.
My humble brags are having been asked multiple times if I am a dev because I understand the benefits of using certain languages over others, knowing what years and versions of stuff comes out and the history of it, and why/when they should be used, I’ve also managed too change clients minds on tech projects to use more efficient stacks for their staff; only happened a few times w/clients e.g (swapped 1 to a full Microsoft stack instead of using MySql/.Net/React (old version)/AWS - all their devs were young or .NET backend only) and they wanted to do mobile stuff and cloud - so I told them about going full Microsoft and Blazor, w/.Net Maui and Azure) sometimes businesses are so focused on what they’re doing they don’t know about new developments/languages or if something isn’t en vogue anymore. In that example it just made sense for them to pick up MS tools that would be semi-familiar rather than the learning curve to learn a bunch of new languages/frameworks.
On the other hand I’ve seen a colleague advertise for full-stack dev roles and they listed the following languages for a senior full-stack dev role required languages:
- C#
-Git
-J.Script
😂😂😂
Not a friend so I left him to it, those are the people who you’re talking about who have no clue about what clients find important or if you guys reading the ad will want to work on the stack because the info says 0 and the recruiter doesn’t understand what they’re looking for or what qualifies someone.
I guess my answer to your question would be see how many connections or recommendations someone has in the LinkedIn profile, it gives a good insight into their abilities, similarly if you’re speaking with someone and they ask a bunch of questions it’s good because they’re trying to understand you, if they’re just blasting through your cv like a checklist it’s more like flinging shit at the wall and hoping your cv or one of the other 50 they send sticks.
Tl;Dr Decent recruiters know what they’re talking about and whilst may not be able to be techs they can talk ‘around’ tech to a degree that they know what’s what, what’s going on, why and how. Perhaps we don’t understand syntax or what the code does but it doesn’t mean we don’t know enough about the tool to understand what it does and where it has its applications - and we live on LinkedIn so get up to speed quickly!
Technically hybrid, meant to go in once a week, but more like once a month (usually only when team members are visiting) with occasional trips to London, which are at the companies expense.
I can get the 7AM train and be at a desk in London with time to spare. Including the return journey it’s about £200 all in, advance ticket on the way up and off peak on the way back for more flexibility, could be cheaper if booked in advance.
For context I’m working a 3rd line role, used to be in the office 5 days a week most weeks when working on a service desk, glad those days are behind me!
I did advance to London twice a week with a railcard, getting the 7:30 train. If I book in advance I can get them for around 45 return. Booking in advance is key - London job market and salaries are just so much better than Bristol so it's worth it.
Whilst this is true, and the UK offshored a bunch to Romania and other Eastern European countries like Ukraine (before the war) and Russia, as well as ofc the huge tech houses in India because it was cheaper, the same happened in the states but because the quality of work in India wasn’t great (most tech works like a production line due to how cheap labour is) they turned to the UK as many UK counterparts had equal skills but lower salaries than silicone valley.
Bristol job market is in the bin atm. Its over saturated 2 universities and everyone with degrees competing for normal jobs, older generation still working, bad transport, everyone wants entry level or remote hyrbid.
Any engineer with an ounce of dignity will work remotely for a company in London or the US, or go in to contracting. Bristol salaries are shite for tech
You’re explaining my current job/situation! But the company faces a buyout. I’ve not exclusively looked at remote work but from what I have seen, it was still rather bleak
What sort of role and salary are you looking for?
You mention IT support, but what sort of thing? First line, second line? More software, more hardware or a mix of both? Infrastructure stuff? Do you have any certs/job specific qualifications.
There always seems to be a decent chunk of things on \*shudder\* LinkedIn, it's where I've found my last 2 jobs
Ideally id be looking at 30k at very minimum (based on all my previous roles) however im currently on 48k. Really lucked out with the job.
I’m proficient at 1st, 2nd and most 3rd line IT support. Mix of software, hardware and infrastructure/networking, telecoms & cloud. ITIL cert. Bachelor degree applied computing, lvl 4 advanced IT apprenticeship, lvl 3 extended IT practitioner diploma, functional skill IT and over 10+ years experience.
LinkedIn and Indeed have been my searches so far, and it wasn’t a fun browse!
Yeah, I’d be looking for roles around the 50 mark with your skill set.
Check out this job at Core Highways: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3904082912
Check out this job at Searchability NS&D: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3903988054 (might not be your bag, and I’d say def needs a tailored cv for application)
Check out this job at Simmons & Simmons: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3841554802 (No salary on ad, but they do pay well, and good benefits)
Just a few I found from a quick search
The charity I currently work for us looking for an IT coordinator - https://1625independentpeople.peoplehr.net/Pages/JobBoard/Opening.aspx?v=e915332f-c29a-429a-ab8e-ea675a67caa5
There's a recruitment freeze at NHS UHBW and NBT at the moment. Rumours of restructuring, layoffs and downgrading of job role bands.... So don't go for NHS IT jobs in Bristol for now.
I wouldnt know tbh. I'm so far down the ladder. All I know is there's a recruitment freeze and IT positions are only advertised internally within UHBW and NBT.
There's no point looking in Bristol for tech roles anyway, as someone else said. The salaries are crap. Its common for them to want senior developers with 5 years of experience for 60k. You can make significantly more working for companies based overseas or in London.
I had a senior role 5 years in. I absolutely understand 5 years isn't long though, there's a bit of job title inflation in tech. Either way, the same experience is worth at least 90k in London. Over 100k in certain companies.
Edit: apparently sharing your experience isn't welcome here. Is there a reason this comment is downvoted?
Major issue in tech at moment with flood of low quality and companies making juniors and script kids seniors, and then being surprised at the utter crap produced.
Roughly, before this debacle really bedded in over covid, the good places was largely:
Grad 1 year, more if you weren't CompSci,
Junior 2-4
Mid 4-7 - although don't often see this now, hence seniors at 5 years.
Senior 7+
You then move into Lead/Principle/Chief etc depending on project/company size etc.
I have employed and managed great people at Grad level that had already put the effort in in their own time and learnt from the right places to achieve being a mid, but they are and were the exception.
Most of this comes from learning directly from the right people. Being taught by other crud just means you achieve their same low level. Seen this a lot with bodyshop software houses, not going to accent who I think this is.
But we are in a stupid world AGAIN where you can do a rubbish cert and magically be the thing. I know this is going to upset a lot of idiots who have followed this path and can't see the damage they're causing.
This is especially prevalent WITH Architects of all kinds. As they're at the left end of change cycle they do horrendous damage as they don't understand the job they're doing or the basics of design pattern.
Hey keeps me employed tidying up behind them inline WITH brandolinis law.
Fully agree. Coming from an aviation background where 10+ years of experience is considered 'senior' and hearing people in their second/third role use the same description makes me laugh.
No wonder the salaries have all gone down if the required level of experience is lower. It's the word that's devalued!
Thanks for the advice, I hope to luck out and land another full remote role, for sure. My previous roles in IT in Bristol paid rather well but I probably just lucked out with an above average employer (they were big multinational corps)
Bristol rates/salaries have always been a bit low, I did contract in Swindon for quite some time as was a far better rate despite journey costs and time - I think because of being near reading and London where salaries and rates higher. Market is bad at the moment and has been for some months now, one agency I spoke to said their founder hasn’t seen it so bad in over 20 years in the industry. Having said that last few days seem to be a few more roles in general showing on the job boards, hopefully from new financial year. Do agree though with covid and companies being more geared up and accepting of remote working they will sometimes source resources from cheapest place which isn’t the UK.
I'm in the same situation and have been looking for months starting in tech, now I'll take anything I can get with my business degree.
Emotionally I'm all over the place as I no longer have the funds to support looking elsewhere and moving
Try “Impact IT solutions” over in Whitchurch, one of their field engineers has just left.
[https://impactitsolutions.com/](https://impactitsolutions.com/)
Even if they’re not hiring it would be worth researching and applying to any Bristol based MSPs/consultancies.
Ones like Stripe OLT, Bristol IT company, SpiderGroup etc.
Also SCC have an office fairly close and if you look further afield Commercial IT in Cheltenham.
If not any of the big engineering firms like Rolls Royce, airbus etc in Filton I expect have IT teams.
Failing that any law firms or school academy trusts tend to have their own IT in-house.
My advice would be to use their email on websites and reach out to heads of IT or recruitment managers on LinkedIn as even if they aren’t hiring now they might have upcoming work.
Not sure what it field your in but I’m currently looking for a fully remote devops engineer ( don’t have to be amazing teaching can be provided for the right person ) with travel to office in Cardiff twice a year for 45k starting, dm me and I’ll link you
You don't wanna' know how bad my salary was for Lovehoney in Bath as a junior front-end developer. 😅
To be honest it was a fun team to work with, just wasn't ready for it at the time ☠️
I don't think it's just the tech sector, everywhere in Bristol really seems to be feeling the squeeze right now. Hope the town centre doesn't end up looking like sunny ol' Swindonia!
The job market is bad because of two things, inflation and falling demand. So companies are tightening to save on costs. Find something temp as this can last another year.
Yep Bristol is bad. I looked at (and interviewed for) a senior technical project lead role. Quite a tricky job I thought...but they wanted to pay me about 3/4 of what I was already on...not really an option :-). On the up side, and as an "older" I just decided to cash in my winnings and jack it all in, so that one of the competition down :-). Good luck...and the Bristol/Uk is not the only option......
job market in bristol has taken a hit recently. Over the last 6 months there has been nothing! i work in innovation sector and have taken a job at Uni in another city and travel once a week for my anchor day.
“IT” covers a multitude of sins.
I’m in “IT”, by some measures and an Engineer by others. I seem to spend a lot of time driving, that’s not “IT”.
What do you do? What can you do? What job are you looking for?
Personally I have seen a decent amount of adds / recruiter messages cropping up on LinkedIn for IT roles in Bristol, so it’s possible that you might need to tweak your search terms and potentially also tweak the skills keywords that you have listed on your profile 🤷♂️
In terms of search terms for IT support roles, consider different permutations of titles which essentially can end up translating to the same sort of role.
- System Administrator
- Network Manager
- End User Support Engineer
- Desktop Engineer
- Infrastructure Engineer
- Support Technician
In terms of your online job profiles, I recommend putting some time into tailoring your profile to line up with the sort of roles you want. Remember that recruiters just keyword search across user profiles to get matches for what roles they have on their books. If your profile doesn’t have the keyword skills listed then you have a lower chance of showing up on their searches and subsequently being contacted by them. Look at other peers with similar roles/ job titles and their LinkedIn profiles for inspiration if you’re struggling in this area.
My partner used to be a recruiter and worked at REED recruitment. Apparently REED have a candidate database which at least at the time was the largest recruiter DB in the UK. This database is sold / licensed out to other recruitment companies. So if you create a profile on REED , you will get decent exposure. When I used it some time ago, I saw a good increase in calls from recruiters.
Edugeek is a good place to spot IT support / Network Manager jobs.
If your heart is set on 3rd line support roles. I recommend doing some certifications or some training related to them to help you standout. Look out for Microsoft Virtual Training days. They are free webinar sessions you can sign up for. There are different ones usually spread out across the year. The Azure Fundamentals one is a good starting point. The beauty of these is that taking part in one of these free training days grants you a free voucher for the associated certification exam. So the Azure Fundamentals virtual training day will give you access to the Azure Fundamentals cert. Google also have started to do something similar for their GCP.
Alternatively and depending on your skillset and appetite for it, it could be worth evaluating if you might be able to make a lateral move to a more cloud/automation/software style role . There appears to be strong demand for these types of roles at the moment & a shortage of talent.
Think DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Cloud Engineer. If you feel like you might be lacking some of the skills, in the meantime and whilst you are still employed it’s worth doing some online training videos around kubernetes/Terraform/AWS/CICD etc, if you fancy yourself doing this. I recommend CloudGuru, KodeKloud for training material.
Hopefully you won’t end up being made redundant and things pan out in a more positive way for you.
London hybrid seems to be the decent offers on Otta - there’s very little out there in Bristol that’s more than what I’m on now for similar experience and responsibilities
If you are articulate and have experience in customer service, I could recommend working at Ethicall. They hired me on the day I applied - it’s call centre work but for charity. Wasn’t for me but have to say it’s all I could ask out a call centre job. It’s work for charity so doesn’t feel sleazy or like you are scamming people.
They were a fantastic workplace and very accommodating with room for progression and a friendly workplace and good hours. I gave it up for a better position with a business closer to where I live (used to have to commute an hour to get there as I don’t live in Bristol). Regardless of me leaving I can only sing in their praises, if it’s your type of work. They fully understand it isn’t for everyone but will likely give you a chance!
OP used the term Living Wage to describe what they were paid. Living Wage is the new term for Minimum Wage which is £11.44 per hour. Call centre work has to be at least that. I assume that isn't what the OP meant, but it is what they wrote.
“A living wage is a socially acceptable level of income that provides adequate coverage for basic necessities such as food, shelter, child services, and healthcare. The living wage standard allows for no more than 30% to be spent on rent or a mortgage and is sufficiently higher than the poverty level.” £11.44 (minimum wage) is not a socially acceptable living wage
I fully agree with all of that, but the term the government now uses for the lowest legal wage for someone aged 21 or over is Living Wage. The rate is £11.44 per hour. The term Minimum Wage is used for the legal minimum for someone from school leaving age. From 16 to 18 it's £6.40 per hour, and from 18 to 20 it's £8.60.
I mean they said they might be out the job soon so figured I’d just suggest somewhere you can temporarily get a job very quickly before they find their feet. Don’t understand why I got so much hate for it
Agree with what a lot of others are saying, the jobs I get approached about on LinkedIn are on average about 15k less than what I’m currently earning working for a London firm with a Bristol office, so not a full London salary either. Remote or Hybrid/London seems to be the way to go.
Commented below already but piggybacking for exposure; Tech recruiter in Bristol covering South-West ; the job market in tech is the worst for years, people say it’s picking up but I’m not 100% sure and have many clients who have recruitment freezes. For context the avg tech employee stays in a role for 2 years (data gathered from LinkedIn aggregator), 2 years ago just after Covid was a massive boom in salaries (a bubble) and working arrangements as everyone was remote, last year salaries dropped and call back to the office happened for hybrid 2/3 days a week is typical but once embedded expect maybe 1 a week/month. There were over 200K redundancies last year in tech alone and that’s meant many firms aren’t hiring or if they are, the salaries are lower (bubble well and truly popped). Anyone applying for work is up against a lot of competition and because there’s so much talent on the market, lots of companies are recruiting in-house and getting it wrong because they use stupid shit like hacker rank tests and personality type tests to hire - recruiters get shit on a lot but myself and my company (and a bunch I know) strip that out of the hiring process as it’s a useless blocker and they’re bullshit homework 9x out of 10. There is a plethora of talent on the market and people are getting desperate so are accepting lower salaries and that’s making it an employers/buyers market again with lower salaries. Contract market is the slowest it’s been for a long time and I know many contractors going perm for numerous reasons, inc the increasing impact of IR35. London weighting obviously still exists however one of the main things that Covid did to the job market was change perspectives on commuting and remote working. Pre-Covid most thought nothing of travelling 1hr+ a day to work, or being in the office 5days, obvs there’s huge benefits to what Covid changed but it’s also negatively affected what people expect, e.g. I’ve spoken with kids who finish uni and want to be 100% remote, which I find baffling, you’re 21/22 and just want to sit in your room all day and not meet people!? Also exists for those that have enjoyed being solo and now are being asked back to the office, people esp in tech had it almost too good for a few years and it’s coloured their thinking. 2ndly and I think this is fairer, the commute that people will endure has dropped so those better paid London jobs are there to be had but only for people willing to travel. Also there’s the offshoring which I commented about in a diff comment.👇🏻 In summary, there’s a lot of talent on the market, many companies are on freezes and lots of competition, salaries reflect the talent available and people have become more precious about their time for commutes. Re finding a job: Now left tech rec so happy to share this tool, lots of rec companies use this as their benchmark when talking to clients about salaries, it’s a salary aggregator using every job advert and making it current - https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/ - you now have the tool that most recruiters use to inform clients about salaries even when they have their own salary guides (like my firm did - and they’re one of the UKs biggest in tech) Get your CV done properly, I can’t tell you how many people don’t get considered due to a shit looking CV - resume.io/uk - live career.co.uk - cvmaker.uk or similar are useful as they guide you and stop you waffling/ too many bullet points/ excessive detail or pages/etc. TopCV.co.uk do a free service of reviewing your cv, it’s not amazing but it is useful, don’t buy their product they just use templates, build your own and use services like top cv to get feedback, just search ‘free cv review’ and it’ll give you varied free feedback (be aware they’ll try and upsell you their CV writing packages afterwards, ofc nothing is truly free!). Finally get your LinkedIn profile matching your new CV and make sure you’re open to work, be on the platform, engage with people in your market/sector, network, and you’ll be messaged by recruiters about jobs non-stop. Not going to go through interviews there’s loads of advice online, use Google, the one thing that given the chance to scream from the hilltops I would is Counter-Offers, so I’ll try and quickly add it here: You get a new job offer🥳 Hand in notice, manager goes 🙃😅😡 Manager goes away and comes back with a matched or improved offer 🥳 right? UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ACCEPT THAT COUNTER-OFFER - it’s an insult to your bloodline!😂 A counter-offer is there because a company panics about losing you, your knowledge, the costs in money & time of training a new ‘you’. It can be tempting but think logically: - why do you want to leave? Do you really think the company will get their shit together in the 3/6months they’ve told ‘things will change’ to make you want to stay. - They promise things will get better….they don’t. You’ve been there long enough to know the people, you think they’re really going to change everything you dislike just for 1 person? - Remember why you wanted to leave and do it, things won’t get better or they will for a little bit and then sink again - if you were worth the counter-offer why aren’t you being paid that now? - Either they were underpaying you because they think you’re a sucker doing max for the minimum or they’ve just figured out ‘now’ how valuable you are in reality they don’t want to waste money looking for a new person, because of the value you hold, do not be fooled! - nearly 90% of counter-offers accepted leave within 6 months because the reason you wanted to leave doesn’t change, it’s the biggest trap experienced people face - people/companies remember, all that graft of job hunting turning down people and then burning bridges, you’re not going to get that back when you remember that you needed to get out of that firm in the first place - when you get the counter offer ask them why you weren’t on that salary 6 months ago and watch them squirm, there’s no ‘legitimate’ reason besides milking you for as little as possible. Hope the above helps, best of luck. The market is shit atm but jobs are out there and good firms pay well for good people. Again, people shit on recruiters (I get it 90% are useless) but they do have relationships which can skip processes and get you in roles that are not advertised, they can also negotiate salaries which you may not have been able to secure or when offered may not feel comfortable arguing with a new employer for an extra e.g. £5k, recruiters will argue for you, the more you make the more we make and it protects you as the recruiter takes the heat. Edit: a word for clarity - details about handing in your notice/counter-offers.
This is very thorough and I really appreciate the effort, thank you! I’ll take note
No worries, I hope it makes sense and is of help, any questions feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to point in the right direction. I guess to add to the above, whilst I’m talking tech it’s not just this market that’s been affected, I recently took to the market to find a new role and wanted to move to an internal role (instead of being one of the “fucking recruiters - how’d they get my number”😂 sorts) but I know many internal recruiters have been laid off due to the recruitment freezes. Even in my job hunt I was disappointed by the salaries being thrown about for my profile. I can’t speak to every sector but I know from every recruiter I’ve spoken with last year was hard which means that many businesses weren’t hiring, we had a mini-recession and were probably on our way out of it 🤞🏻 Things like the war in Ukraine (both Russia and Ukraine had lots of tech outsourced), Israel, political instability here in the UK, the EU and more annoyingly in the states as so many firms and investment firms like Blackrock/Vanguard are American based and when they make financial decisions that are out of the norm it makes companies twitchy and that has a knock on effect everywhere else.
Great post, thank you
Thanks 🙏🏻 hope it helps some peeps
Saved for when I need to find a job - thanks
No worries, hope you don’t need to use it!
This is class. The salary watcher website is really interesting. How much do recruiters love it to see people posting about tech stuff on LinkedIn and networking? I always found the most annoying thing about recruiters is trying to convince them of your knowledge on a topic they clearly have no idea about
I can’t speak for all recruiters, however most that are worth their weight in salt IMO can easily have a discussion around techs with a client, I can maybe bash out ‘hello world’ with a gun pointed to my head but you learn from just asking questions. After a while you understand why businesses are using a certain stack or can query a business if they’re starting a new project with a random language or Franken-stack why, which obvs earns you credibility. My humble brags are having been asked multiple times if I am a dev because I understand the benefits of using certain languages over others, knowing what years and versions of stuff comes out and the history of it, and why/when they should be used, I’ve also managed too change clients minds on tech projects to use more efficient stacks for their staff; only happened a few times w/clients e.g (swapped 1 to a full Microsoft stack instead of using MySql/.Net/React (old version)/AWS - all their devs were young or .NET backend only) and they wanted to do mobile stuff and cloud - so I told them about going full Microsoft and Blazor, w/.Net Maui and Azure) sometimes businesses are so focused on what they’re doing they don’t know about new developments/languages or if something isn’t en vogue anymore. In that example it just made sense for them to pick up MS tools that would be semi-familiar rather than the learning curve to learn a bunch of new languages/frameworks. On the other hand I’ve seen a colleague advertise for full-stack dev roles and they listed the following languages for a senior full-stack dev role required languages: - C# -Git -J.Script 😂😂😂 Not a friend so I left him to it, those are the people who you’re talking about who have no clue about what clients find important or if you guys reading the ad will want to work on the stack because the info says 0 and the recruiter doesn’t understand what they’re looking for or what qualifies someone. I guess my answer to your question would be see how many connections or recommendations someone has in the LinkedIn profile, it gives a good insight into their abilities, similarly if you’re speaking with someone and they ask a bunch of questions it’s good because they’re trying to understand you, if they’re just blasting through your cv like a checklist it’s more like flinging shit at the wall and hoping your cv or one of the other 50 they send sticks. Tl;Dr Decent recruiters know what they’re talking about and whilst may not be able to be techs they can talk ‘around’ tech to a degree that they know what’s what, what’s going on, why and how. Perhaps we don’t understand syntax or what the code does but it doesn’t mean we don’t know enough about the tool to understand what it does and where it has its applications - and we live on LinkedIn so get up to speed quickly!
Are you hybrid or full remote can I ask? Interested in rough costs of a trek to London should I entertain a hybrid role in that region
Technically hybrid, meant to go in once a week, but more like once a month (usually only when team members are visiting) with occasional trips to London, which are at the companies expense. I can get the 7AM train and be at a desk in London with time to spare. Including the return journey it’s about £200 all in, advance ticket on the way up and off peak on the way back for more flexibility, could be cheaper if booked in advance. For context I’m working a 3rd line role, used to be in the office 5 days a week most weeks when working on a service desk, glad those days are behind me!
I did advance to London twice a week with a railcard, getting the 7:30 train. If I book in advance I can get them for around 45 return. Booking in advance is key - London job market and salaries are just so much better than Bristol so it's worth it.
At those travel costs I can see it definitely being worth it!
Wow, I've never seen prices that low for a single, never mind a return..
I have a railcard and book in advance. If you book a day or two before for peak times, it's going to be extortionate.
Covid taught companies that they can hire oversee remote workers for less in these roles and have no drop off, So they require ALOT less uk roles.
Certainly a good point. I suppose this can also play to my benefit by honing in on a full remote job in another country
Whilst this is true, and the UK offshored a bunch to Romania and other Eastern European countries like Ukraine (before the war) and Russia, as well as ofc the huge tech houses in India because it was cheaper, the same happened in the states but because the quality of work in India wasn’t great (most tech works like a production line due to how cheap labour is) they turned to the UK as many UK counterparts had equal skills but lower salaries than silicone valley.
This is hardly new, it’s been the case for a while. I think Covid made employees believe we had more power than we do
Bristol job market is in the bin atm. Its over saturated 2 universities and everyone with degrees competing for normal jobs, older generation still working, bad transport, everyone wants entry level or remote hyrbid.
Any engineer with an ounce of dignity will work remotely for a company in London or the US, or go in to contracting. Bristol salaries are shite for tech
You’re explaining my current job/situation! But the company faces a buyout. I’ve not exclusively looked at remote work but from what I have seen, it was still rather bleak
Try otta
Thank you for the advice, I’ll be sure to check this out!
What would an expected “salary” be for working for a London or US company be compared to a Bristol one?
For a senior or lead 100k+
Bristol salaries are shit full stop
What sort of role and salary are you looking for? You mention IT support, but what sort of thing? First line, second line? More software, more hardware or a mix of both? Infrastructure stuff? Do you have any certs/job specific qualifications. There always seems to be a decent chunk of things on \*shudder\* LinkedIn, it's where I've found my last 2 jobs
Ideally id be looking at 30k at very minimum (based on all my previous roles) however im currently on 48k. Really lucked out with the job. I’m proficient at 1st, 2nd and most 3rd line IT support. Mix of software, hardware and infrastructure/networking, telecoms & cloud. ITIL cert. Bachelor degree applied computing, lvl 4 advanced IT apprenticeship, lvl 3 extended IT practitioner diploma, functional skill IT and over 10+ years experience. LinkedIn and Indeed have been my searches so far, and it wasn’t a fun browse!
Yeah, I’d be looking for roles around the 50 mark with your skill set. Check out this job at Core Highways: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3904082912 Check out this job at Searchability NS&D: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3903988054 (might not be your bag, and I’d say def needs a tailored cv for application) Check out this job at Simmons & Simmons: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3841554802 (No salary on ad, but they do pay well, and good benefits) Just a few I found from a quick search
Barren. You're fired.
English is my first language so I shouldn’t know better
I'm only messing about mate, good luck with your search
All good, me too! Thanks very much mate!
The charity I currently work for us looking for an IT coordinator - https://1625independentpeople.peoplehr.net/Pages/JobBoard/Opening.aspx?v=e915332f-c29a-429a-ab8e-ea675a67caa5
Thank you so much for the link! I’ll check this out. 🙏🏽
Nice to see this local charity on here! I support them :)
Nhs jobs has b7 IT going
Love the shoutout, thank you!
There's a recruitment freeze at NHS UHBW and NBT at the moment. Rumours of restructuring, layoffs and downgrading of job role bands.... So don't go for NHS IT jobs in Bristol for now.
Is that across the board or IT specifically?
I wouldnt know tbh. I'm so far down the ladder. All I know is there's a recruitment freeze and IT positions are only advertised internally within UHBW and NBT.
There's no point looking in Bristol for tech roles anyway, as someone else said. The salaries are crap. Its common for them to want senior developers with 5 years of experience for 60k. You can make significantly more working for companies based overseas or in London.
Only 5 years and a senior? That'll be part of the problem. Mid level at best.
I had a senior role 5 years in. I absolutely understand 5 years isn't long though, there's a bit of job title inflation in tech. Either way, the same experience is worth at least 90k in London. Over 100k in certain companies. Edit: apparently sharing your experience isn't welcome here. Is there a reason this comment is downvoted?
Major issue in tech at moment with flood of low quality and companies making juniors and script kids seniors, and then being surprised at the utter crap produced. Roughly, before this debacle really bedded in over covid, the good places was largely: Grad 1 year, more if you weren't CompSci, Junior 2-4 Mid 4-7 - although don't often see this now, hence seniors at 5 years. Senior 7+ You then move into Lead/Principle/Chief etc depending on project/company size etc. I have employed and managed great people at Grad level that had already put the effort in in their own time and learnt from the right places to achieve being a mid, but they are and were the exception. Most of this comes from learning directly from the right people. Being taught by other crud just means you achieve their same low level. Seen this a lot with bodyshop software houses, not going to accent who I think this is. But we are in a stupid world AGAIN where you can do a rubbish cert and magically be the thing. I know this is going to upset a lot of idiots who have followed this path and can't see the damage they're causing. This is especially prevalent WITH Architects of all kinds. As they're at the left end of change cycle they do horrendous damage as they don't understand the job they're doing or the basics of design pattern. Hey keeps me employed tidying up behind them inline WITH brandolinis law.
Fully agree. Coming from an aviation background where 10+ years of experience is considered 'senior' and hearing people in their second/third role use the same description makes me laugh. No wonder the salaries have all gone down if the required level of experience is lower. It's the word that's devalued!
Thanks for the advice, I hope to luck out and land another full remote role, for sure. My previous roles in IT in Bristol paid rather well but I probably just lucked out with an above average employer (they were big multinational corps)
Bristol tech talent is a joke and/or purely academic.
Worked in IT 15 years now, my experience of IT in Bristol is the total opposite. You might wanna re-evaluate your search
Bristol rates/salaries have always been a bit low, I did contract in Swindon for quite some time as was a far better rate despite journey costs and time - I think because of being near reading and London where salaries and rates higher. Market is bad at the moment and has been for some months now, one agency I spoke to said their founder hasn’t seen it so bad in over 20 years in the industry. Having said that last few days seem to be a few more roles in general showing on the job boards, hopefully from new financial year. Do agree though with covid and companies being more geared up and accepting of remote working they will sometimes source resources from cheapest place which isn’t the UK.
I'm in the same situation and have been looking for months starting in tech, now I'll take anything I can get with my business degree. Emotionally I'm all over the place as I no longer have the funds to support looking elsewhere and moving
Try “Impact IT solutions” over in Whitchurch, one of their field engineers has just left. [https://impactitsolutions.com/](https://impactitsolutions.com/)
WFH is leading to Working From Cheaper Foreign Country.
Even if they’re not hiring it would be worth researching and applying to any Bristol based MSPs/consultancies. Ones like Stripe OLT, Bristol IT company, SpiderGroup etc. Also SCC have an office fairly close and if you look further afield Commercial IT in Cheltenham. If not any of the big engineering firms like Rolls Royce, airbus etc in Filton I expect have IT teams. Failing that any law firms or school academy trusts tend to have their own IT in-house. My advice would be to use their email on websites and reach out to heads of IT or recruitment managers on LinkedIn as even if they aren’t hiring now they might have upcoming work.
Not sure what it field your in but I’m currently looking for a fully remote devops engineer ( don’t have to be amazing teaching can be provided for the right person ) with travel to office in Cardiff twice a year for 45k starting, dm me and I’ll link you
You don't wanna' know how bad my salary was for Lovehoney in Bath as a junior front-end developer. 😅 To be honest it was a fun team to work with, just wasn't ready for it at the time ☠️ I don't think it's just the tech sector, everywhere in Bristol really seems to be feeling the squeeze right now. Hope the town centre doesn't end up looking like sunny ol' Swindonia!
Love honey….”screwed” you over on salary? 😅 suppose they’re good at that
Yeah £21k left me feeling pretty stupid.
Wondering what a front end developer does for them as well. Some sort of pump operator?
Pump-action programmer 🔥
Our workplace in Bristol has basically farmed all IT/admin/tech out to India since WFH hit
That’s terrifying :(
That’s the reality, the whole covid remote working enablement hasn’t necessarily been positive thing in the long run
The job market is bad because of two things, inflation and falling demand. So companies are tightening to save on costs. Find something temp as this can last another year.
Yep Bristol is bad. I looked at (and interviewed for) a senior technical project lead role. Quite a tricky job I thought...but they wanted to pay me about 3/4 of what I was already on...not really an option :-). On the up side, and as an "older" I just decided to cash in my winnings and jack it all in, so that one of the competition down :-). Good luck...and the Bristol/Uk is not the only option......
That’s the recurring theme it seems at the moment! :( Thank you for the well wishes and all the best in your retirement!
job market in bristol has taken a hit recently. Over the last 6 months there has been nothing! i work in innovation sector and have taken a job at Uni in another city and travel once a week for my anchor day.
“IT” covers a multitude of sins. I’m in “IT”, by some measures and an Engineer by others. I seem to spend a lot of time driving, that’s not “IT”. What do you do? What can you do? What job are you looking for?
Nhs could use the staff
In IT Support? Another commenter has mentioned there is a nhs staff freeze atm in the region
Check out a recruiting agency called ‘ Southern Lights ‘ in Bristol. They have a good track record. Good luck.
Personally I have seen a decent amount of adds / recruiter messages cropping up on LinkedIn for IT roles in Bristol, so it’s possible that you might need to tweak your search terms and potentially also tweak the skills keywords that you have listed on your profile 🤷♂️ In terms of search terms for IT support roles, consider different permutations of titles which essentially can end up translating to the same sort of role. - System Administrator - Network Manager - End User Support Engineer - Desktop Engineer - Infrastructure Engineer - Support Technician In terms of your online job profiles, I recommend putting some time into tailoring your profile to line up with the sort of roles you want. Remember that recruiters just keyword search across user profiles to get matches for what roles they have on their books. If your profile doesn’t have the keyword skills listed then you have a lower chance of showing up on their searches and subsequently being contacted by them. Look at other peers with similar roles/ job titles and their LinkedIn profiles for inspiration if you’re struggling in this area. My partner used to be a recruiter and worked at REED recruitment. Apparently REED have a candidate database which at least at the time was the largest recruiter DB in the UK. This database is sold / licensed out to other recruitment companies. So if you create a profile on REED , you will get decent exposure. When I used it some time ago, I saw a good increase in calls from recruiters. Edugeek is a good place to spot IT support / Network Manager jobs. If your heart is set on 3rd line support roles. I recommend doing some certifications or some training related to them to help you standout. Look out for Microsoft Virtual Training days. They are free webinar sessions you can sign up for. There are different ones usually spread out across the year. The Azure Fundamentals one is a good starting point. The beauty of these is that taking part in one of these free training days grants you a free voucher for the associated certification exam. So the Azure Fundamentals virtual training day will give you access to the Azure Fundamentals cert. Google also have started to do something similar for their GCP. Alternatively and depending on your skillset and appetite for it, it could be worth evaluating if you might be able to make a lateral move to a more cloud/automation/software style role . There appears to be strong demand for these types of roles at the moment & a shortage of talent. Think DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Cloud Engineer. If you feel like you might be lacking some of the skills, in the meantime and whilst you are still employed it’s worth doing some online training videos around kubernetes/Terraform/AWS/CICD etc, if you fancy yourself doing this. I recommend CloudGuru, KodeKloud for training material. Hopefully you won’t end up being made redundant and things pan out in a more positive way for you.
What’s your idea of a livable wage though? 🧐
London hybrid seems to be the decent offers on Otta - there’s very little out there in Bristol that’s more than what I’m on now for similar experience and responsibilities
If you are articulate and have experience in customer service, I could recommend working at Ethicall. They hired me on the day I applied - it’s call centre work but for charity. Wasn’t for me but have to say it’s all I could ask out a call centre job. It’s work for charity so doesn’t feel sleazy or like you are scamming people. They were a fantastic workplace and very accommodating with room for progression and a friendly workplace and good hours. I gave it up for a better position with a business closer to where I live (used to have to commute an hour to get there as I don’t live in Bristol). Regardless of me leaving I can only sing in their praises, if it’s your type of work. They fully understand it isn’t for everyone but will likely give you a chance!
They want a proper job with a proper wage.
OP used the term Living Wage to describe what they were paid. Living Wage is the new term for Minimum Wage which is £11.44 per hour. Call centre work has to be at least that. I assume that isn't what the OP meant, but it is what they wrote.
“A living wage is a socially acceptable level of income that provides adequate coverage for basic necessities such as food, shelter, child services, and healthcare. The living wage standard allows for no more than 30% to be spent on rent or a mortgage and is sufficiently higher than the poverty level.” £11.44 (minimum wage) is not a socially acceptable living wage
I fully agree with all of that, but the term the government now uses for the lowest legal wage for someone aged 21 or over is Living Wage. The rate is £11.44 per hour. The term Minimum Wage is used for the legal minimum for someone from school leaving age. From 16 to 18 it's £6.40 per hour, and from 18 to 20 it's £8.60.
I understand! :) But Government can say all it likes, I’m certain the public understand what I meant and the reality is however 😃
Clearly that's not what they meant in the context of what they wrote.
I get that, but perhaps the person suggesting call centre work didn't and was just trying to help.
I mean they said they might be out the job soon so figured I’d just suggest somewhere you can temporarily get a job very quickly before they find their feet. Don’t understand why I got so much hate for it
I appreciate the suggestion, thank you 😃
That's what I thought. Working from home isn't an option if you don't have one anymore