The employment market in the UK isn’t exactly at its best at the moment, but now anyone in the IT sector can look forward to almost absurdly lengthy interviews.
Jobs are scarce, and there’s plenty of competition for all sorts of positions. Nowhere is this more true than in the IT industry, where there’s only so many jobs to go around and employers are looking for the best fit when it comes to a new worker; in fact, with firms looking to keep costs low but still maintain high productivity, I’ve read several stories about how IT contractors are a hot commodity right now.
However, a new research study recently conducted by Randstad Technologies has discovered that the vetting process for IT workers – whether they be applying for an interim role or a permanent position – are being subjected to very rigorous and even exhaustive interview processes. In fact, Randstad says that the average IT worker speds something like 8.2 hours jumping through interview hoops before they’re finally taken on.
I don’t know about you, but this seems a bit extreme to me. It’s gotten much worse over the past few years, as Randstad found that the average round of interviews before securing an IT position in 2008 was 3.7 hours shorter.
It workers make out the worst when it comes to other professionals as well, as the research findings discovered that the recruitment process for other professionals only entails 7 hours of interview or so. That doesn’t sound like much of an improvement, but I’d much rather gain the extra 1.2 hours of my life back so I can watch some Coronation Street in my off hours.
More than 50 per cent of the IT workers, both permanent and interim, said that it was much more difficult to find a new job than it was back in 2008. On top of that, that’s just the interview process itself, which says nothing about all the other non-interview testing and nonsense that you can be subjected to; funnily enough IT workers face fewer time sinks such as those than other jobseekers, which is a bit of a testament to how in-demand IT workers have grown thanks to the growth of technology; on top of that it’s often easier for a contractor to land a lucrative new project than it would be for a permanent worker, as firms tend to offer up temporary work to qualified IT experts in a hurry in order to protect heir bottom line.
It only makes sense, after all: why take on the financial burden of a new permanent employee when you can just contract with a freelancer or umbrella company worker for the length of a project and then cut them loose afterwards?
