u/Weak-Refrigerator-34

“Yes colleagues, we understand that there’s a cost of living crisis, we understand that you can do your job perfectly well and have been doing so since COVID. We understand that childcare costs for families with two working parents are astronomical, especially during the summer. We’re aware that travel costs in and out of London are an extortionate disgrace and that even driving to somewhere like Barclays HQ in Knutsford is an expense because of the hike in fuel prices.

However, we’re fucking ignoring all of that because some insecure little exec who doesn’t have a life has decided that the bank is suffering because people aren’t having “Eureka moments” following the water-cooler conversations.

Water cooler conversations which almost nobody ever has, because there’s nothing worse than having to make small talk whilst having a glass of water.”

Any UK decision-makers interested in discussing an Umbrella Company proposition?

Hope you are well

I have a live contract opportunity that may be of interest to you.

title: BA (Private Banking)
Location:* *Hybrid, 2 days per week Glasgow, rest remote
IR35 Status: Inside  
Duration: 12 Months
Start date: circa 4 weeks from offer
Rate: £350pd

We have two positions: they are looking a BA, and another who has BA +Scrum master experience.

£350. Inside for a Private Banking BA/Scrum Master (so you’d be doing two roles). Take home £175 per day.

Any agency (LA International in this case) who is supporting companies taking the piss out of experienced professionals really needs to be named, shamed and shunned.

Last year it was free. Fuck off HMRC.

Making doing business in the UK a completely fucking pointless, painful exercise in futility.

Anyone else had this utterly nonsensical email from a very well known agency this morning regarding a role?

“We recently invited you to speak with our AI-powered autonomous career agent about an open role we have available for a VP Regulatory manager in City of London - hybrid 50%.”

No, sorry, I do not want to speak to your f*cking chat bot about a senior banking role. Thank you.

If agencies can’t even be arsed picking up the phone now, they should simply be ignored.

Have requested references from Manpower for a spell spent working at their banking client. They’re not entertaining it as I “didn’t technically work for them”, I worked for the Umbrella company. Which is true.

The kickers is the Umbrella work entertain giving a reference either as they “only” provided Payroll and have no idea what I was doing in the role or how I performed.

First time I’m come across this intractable clusterf*ck. Is this a new thing?

Having a tentative look prior to my renewal in Sept. Not expecting not to be renewed, but just in case.

Presumably everyone is still just firing at everything that moves via Jobserve and the hopeless mess that is LinkedIn jobs?

Indeed and a few others seem to be just job aggregators at the min. You could visit 10 diff sites and they all have the same jobs advertised.

Are there any left? Have a mate interviewing one this morning who says it’s outside. I’m
sceptical. If he gets it I reckon the agency will do a rug-pull and say “Sorry, the client has now decided it’s Inside IR35. Anyway, you’ve passed referencing so you start tomorrow.”

I’m fairly sure a lot of agencies are going to race down the “automate everything via AI” and make their services utterly unusable for both contractors, perms and clients alike.

Pick up the phone, sanity check the candidate and run your own assessment re language skills, ability to hold a conversation, answer questions and think on their feet.

AI isn’t going to do any of that. Candidates (me anyway) don’t want to fill in questionnaires or answer chat bot questions.

I hope the ones who go down this route end up going under - it’ll serve them right for trying to automate a fundamental part of their business.

Whilst I’m aware that the majority are largely not arsed about the result, I’d have expected there’d have been a bit of leeway with the sizeable number of English staff, both contractors and perms.

Apparently not.

Had a chat with a mate over the weekend about a potential 6 month role there. Going direct wasn’t an option but said he’d check what the other routes were.

If, as I suspect, he says an Indian consultancy, I’ll pass. I’m fine for working Inside IR35 for £350 a day thanks.

I see a recruiter post every few days on LinkedIn about how the Outside IR35 market is booming.

As an IT PM who keeps a close eye on the market, based on the likelihood of never being more than 4 weeks away from being a jobseeker in reality, my opinion is that the Outside IR35 market is as dead a a dodo across all roles.

Is this recruiter just talking bollocks or am I looking in the wrong places (basically Jobserve, same as I’ve always done).

Have decided to remove all my CVs from all the main recruitment sites where I’ve had a profile on for years. I’m in a role so won’t be such a massive inconvenience, but hoping it makes a difference to the f*ucking insufferable about of spam emails and calls from “market research” companies globally.

I’m assuming this is where they’re getting my details from as the my CV is the only place where they can get my (work) email address and (work) phone number from - I don’t use these personally.

I see the EBT “Providers” have passed their customer info to a few “Legal” firms (questionable) who want the original loans repaid.

This is technically the third bite at the cherry. They came back a few years ago with an “offer” to write off the outstanding “loans” for a one-off payment of £500. Many contractors I know paid it.

In terms of HMRC / Government related clusterfucks, this has to be one of the biggest. A Post-Office type scandal in the making.

Payments tech SME currently. Have a lot of experience in Credit Risk and Reg Tech also. 25 years in Banking.

What’s my pivot to ensure a solid 10 years and an exit at 56? Irish passport holder (UK born), so thinking EU-based roles might play a big part.

Excluding AI as an option as it’s a domain completely saturated with “experts” already.

Anyone else generally pissed off about the fact that there’s a very high probability that recruitment consultants probably never even see tens of CVs which are almost perfect matches for roles due to the volume of ridiculously under-qualified applicants who have applied and swamped their inbox?

My agent told me he had 800+ applications for a Payments SME last year from which he reviewed about 70 CVs and took the 3 most suitable.

It’s a huge problem in the market IMHO.