State of IT jobs Market in Ireland

floyd333

Hi All. I'm wondering whats the IT job market like? I'm due to return to Ireland in January after a year travlling. Are things still really bad? How hard is it to pick up work. I have 12 years experience (dotnet, sharepoint, SQL, web technologies etc.). I'd like to try contracting or I'd like a decent permanent role in Dublin.

_Kaiser_

Well speaking as someone with a similar amount of experience (though in the support end of things rather than programming), and who's been looking for a job for the last 10 months now, I'm starting to think I've a better chance of winning the lotto at this stage than getting a decent IT job.

From what I've found:

- Employers want someone with Server admin, and scripting, and programming, and telephony experience AND qualifications and experience to go with it.

- They also want someone who'll work for around the €30-35k mark with all the above

- Even getting a reply from the agencies, never mind an interview is tough going. There's also so many people applying for what jobs there are that it's a numbers game at this stage

To be honest, if it was an option for you, I'd suggest staying where you are. There's nothing to come back to at the minute.

mkahnisbent

There are plenty of IT jobs out there at the moment. Programming, testing and integrations are healthy enough.

Raekwon

You are in the right field within IT as there are lots of development roles that require the likes of .NET, Java, SQL floating about. Plus with your experience you shouldn't have too much trouble finding work, be it perm or contract.

I'm in System Admin/Networking myself and like Kaiser2000 said there isn't a tap of work out there at the moment as employers are looking for employees that can multitask in many different IT disciplines so they can ultimately keep costs down.

It's actually ironic because I was always told that being a Jack of all Trades was a bad thing to be in IT and it was always drilled into me to specialize in something.

RATM

Just heard from a friend whose mother owns a recruitment company of 70 Java programming jobs available before Xmas. Based in Belfast though and they are looking for graduates with some expereince but not so much that they demand mega salaries as its some sort of start up company.

Though other areas outside of programming do seem to be pretty crap atm tbh.

Plebs

It's an employer's market. They can drive a hard bargain and still have people knocking on the door for work.

If you're young, emigrating might be a good option. €30k to €35k, a 2 year contract, high tax and Dublin rents probably isn't worth it. You'd be better off doing the HDip and becoming a maths teacher.

At least you can console yourself with the fact that the IT sector isn't the worst of 'em.

MysticalRain

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Well speaking as someone with a similar amount of experience (though in the support end of things rather than programming), and who's been looking for a job for the last 10 months now, I'm starting to think I've a better chance of winning the lotto at this stage than getting a decent IT job.

From what I've found:

- Employers want someone with Server admin, and scripting, and programming, and telephony experience AND qualifications and experience to go with it.

- They also want someone who'll work for around the €30-35k mark with all the above

- Even getting a reply from the agencies, never mind an interview is tough going. There's also so many people applying for what jobs there are that it's a numbers game at this stage

To be honest, if it was an option for you, I'd suggest staying where you are. There's nothing to come back to at the minute.

I think you're being a tad optimistic with those salary estimates. I would love to be on that kind of money for doing similar work

I'm sure the OP will find some kind of work with his level of experience. Just expect to be earning an awful lot less than someone in that position would have been earning 5 years ago.

nice1franko

RATM wrote: »

Just heard from a friend whose mother owns a recruitment company of 70 Java programming jobs available before Xmas. Based in Belfast though...

The agency (/agencies) must be scouring linkedin for people for these jobs. Got a message from one today.

nice1franko

A Java programmer and a QA-er very recently left my place for new jobs. They both said something to the effect of: "there are fair few jobs about".

floyd333

Thanks for all the info folks. Things sound pretty bad at home. Hope fully I can pick up something. Emigrating is an option. Not sure where to though.

RATM wrote: »

Just heard from a friend whose mother owns a recruitment company of 70 Java programming jobs available before Xmas. Based in Belfast though and they are looking for graduates with some expereince but not so much that they demand mega salaries as its some sort of start up company.

Though other areas outside of programming do seem to be pretty crap atm tbh.

RATM can you send on some info on the Jobs in Belfast. I'd definitely be interested.

irishguy

nice1franko wrote: »

A Java programmer and a QA-er very recently left my place for new jobs. They both said something to the effect of: "there are fair few jobs about".

Hmm I know of 3 companies hiring/just hired C.60 Java developers between them in Dublin. I also know 13 people who have moved in the last 2 months (including myself), mostly Java, couple of technical consultants, DBA's and Unix.

We are hiring Java people at the moment (Finding it hard to get people with 5+ years exp). Also I am getting a few recruiters contact me each week about jobs.

Another guy I know came back to Ireland from traveling for 12 months and have a contract in his hand after 3 weeks of getting off the plane (Java Dev).

OP, I dont think you will find it a problem getting work, especially with the .Net and share point experience.

matrim

I know of at least 5 people who have gotten / moved jobs in the last couple of months.

There are jobs out there but there is also competition for them. Once you have a good CV you should be able to get something within a couple of months.

Smoggy

Our place is looking for VB6 devs and possibly strong SQL developers for data migration and QA staff.

mwrf

There are two Jobs vacant in my place, One to replace someone that
left for another IT job recently and one is a new position. We recently hired someone into a managerial role also. The software department here is 6 people at the moment. There is definitely jobs out there, You just need to look.

dubhthach

From what I can see there is big demand for experienced technical people. In my place we are looking for a senior dotnet developer at the moment. We've actually had to hire people in London and have them work out of there because they couldn't find suitable people in Ireland.

I'm a system administrator with 7years experience myself and I regularly get phone calls from recruiters regarding different SysAdmin jobs. In my previous role I was made part time in October however I had found my current job within a 6week period (started looking when i got month's notice at end of August of upcoming part-timeness) so I only had a 3 week period of working part time.

qwytre

IT Market in Ireland, specifically Dublin more so than the rest of Ireland, has improved a lot over the last 3-6 months.

Your skills (.Net, sharepoint) are relevant and in a reasonable amount of demand. So if I was you I would be fairly hopeful of finding either a contract or permanent job. Good luck.

trellheim

there is a massive amount of jobs going, been passive recruited 5 times in the last quarter [ didn't go near the jobs ]

core skills always matter, SQL Server and Oracle will always be in demand [ ok well not always but 20 years and counting so far ain't bad with no signs of slowing down. ]

hmmm

People with hard technical sysadmin/networking skills seem to be doing ok.

People who can't demonstrate technical skills are finding it tough. It's particularly hard for those who've been left go after 10 years and who haven't been keeping their certs uptodate.

There are a lot of generic "IT project managers" around.

If you have a reasonable mix of skills you are now very employable. Companies that have left people go are looking to hire one person to fill two jobs.

goluck

as for senior .net development jobs, i'm finding that there are only a handful of positions out there which are being advertised over and over again and being recruited for by all the agencies in town. some of these positions have been open for already 1-2 months. only god knows what that means. either there are no qualified candidates or there are too many qualified candidates and employers are taking their sweet time trying to find top talent for low euro.

Smoggy

or CV harvesting ? it happened in boom times, so you can be sure it's happening now.

floyd333

Thanks for all the advice folks. Seems to be a few things out there. might try google too I know it's little off topic but does anyone know is difficult to do IT consulting. Where to find consulting jobs etc? Are there any useful websites I could look at?

yop

Seems to be a steady flow of work in .NET from my side of things, but all in Dublin. Working a 2 day per week contract up here currently but hard to get anything outside of here.

shoegirl

hmmm wrote: »

People with hard technical sysadmin/networking skills seem to be doing ok.

People who can't demonstrate technical skills are finding it tough. It's particularly hard for those who've been left go after 10 years and who haven't been keeping their certs uptodate.

+1

Very much seeing that. If you can demonstrate your skills you'll get work. Mostly in Dublin though - less so outside capital but some traditional hirers are still hiring albeit at slower paces.

Very difficult for anybody though who didn't bother keeping up to date.

powerstar

Hi all,

Which technology has more jobs at the moment Java or .Net

goluck

i don't have any stats or real numbers to back it up but it seems to me there's more java jobs. the pay rates for either .net or java perm position is the same right now so that usually implies that there is a even supply/demand balance for the two but it's not very telling about whether there are more .net or java positions. the c++ pay rate is higher than both because there are very few c++ devs out there but probably even fewer c++ positions to be filled.

at least as far as the big players are concerned (ibm, oracle, google, facebook, ebay etc), they are all non-.net so there is little chance of getting a position with them if you are hard core .net in my opinon. sure microsoft will be looking for .net people but they only have a couple of development positions open right now.

anyways, if i was to start my dev career right now, i'd go with java but i'm already a few good years into .net, so it'll be too difficult to switch now.