Job hunting but no response whatsoever - is it me or the UK job market is incredibly bad?

[ForThisPost1]

I work in tech in London, and this is the first time I have experienced this. Usually, I will receive calls from recruiters shortly after I set my LinkedIn profile to "open to work, actively searching". But I have been waiting to hear something since last October. I applied for many jobs but have yet to receive a response, apart from one or two rejection emails. This is very unusual. Initially, I thought it was because of my CV, but my friend, who is a professional recruiter, reviewed it and said it was a great one. This situation puzzles me. Is it me, or is the job market exceptionally bad now?

Any suggestion is welcome. Thank you so much.

Thats interesting. I wouldn't have thought you'd have trouble recruiting for that position in NY. Is it not full of young talent looking for a first or near-first opportunity?

We're not in NYC; we're about 50 miles north in the Hudson Highlands. So talent is a bit thinner up here. And they're requiring some experience, so not quite entry level. They may have to adjust that if they don't start seeing better candidates.

TBF a lot of "entry level" jobs seem to have a massive list of requirements and don't sound entry level at all. A lot of companies seem to want non entry level people at entry level prices

Same here, lots of jobs looking for my skill set but when I apply absolutely no response. It's really weird as normally you would get a couple of takers. I can't fathom it, I'm assuming my application is being filtered out but not sure how or why.

Some agencies/HR do use automated scanning software and will filter out applications that don't contain the correct keywords. Other times they are looking manually at 100+ applications and will just stop looking through them once they've found the first decent five CV's to put forward.

Im sort of on the same boat. Use your network. People are now using automation to apply automatically on LinkedIn. Its nuts. Ive had interviews but no cigar. Ive heard a lot that people were waiting till this quarter. Im looking at starting my own thing and contracting. I dont think its just the uk.

Many of the jobs on LinkedIn don’t exist. Some definitely do.. If using LinkedIn try to apply directly to firms rather than through agents. If using agents, make sure you’ve spoke to them and ideally even met them! They tend to take the piss less..

I’m hearing it’s the same in New York and Singapore so it’s not just the UK or Brexit..

I work in the care sector and job vacancies are very low at the moment with care companies. I was actually made redundant from a care home I was a supervisor in November. I never thought I would ever be made redundant in a care job as companies are usually screaming out for staff. i had already had a job lined up thankfully and got a nice bit of redundancy pay but when looking at job sites out of curiosity their is barely any new postings.

The job market is non-existent really. It also seems to want people with ridiculously specific experience that require no training at all or people just starting out. I've seen the same jobs being advertised over and over so they're clearly not finding people to do them.

I think maybe you're unlucky in the field you are in? I know three people who've found jobs recently with hefty pay rises from their previous salaries.
Good luck!

DH loves to show me the job adverts he gets emailed from LinkedIn, particularly from smaller organizations. They want a new Director of IT who is also a full stack web developer, SQL developer, mobile app developer, Cisco certified network tech and can handle all of the end user support and hardware deployment. All on day one, of course.

@angela1952 - thank you. Can I ask which sector are you friends in? It seems the variation is huge depending on sectors.

Two on the admin side of large tech companies, one a video editor in a niche job.

I’m in tech too. I started seeking for a job in December 2023 and it's been dead quiet.I thought it had to do with the festive period and restarted again 2 weeks ago but nothing from anywhere. Never experienced this before. No single phone call. My CV is lit because I’m a professional CV writer so I don't think it's my CV. I spoke to my seniors in a similar role and they said it's the same for them. So, It has reduced my anxiety and I’m doing other things and still searching. Good luck and I hope things will pick up for us.👍

@Jay5678
I have never seen this since graduation. My workplace is quite toxic which makes thing much worse.

@ForThisPost1 and others who work in tech, I highly recommend so many sketches in this Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/tldv.io/?hl=en

I'm not looking to work in tech, but this is so true. I work in quite an industry that is gaining a reputation as being fairly nightmarish. Very few have experience in the field, so they are not spoilt for choice, and yet I see job adverts that are anything between 10 - 20k lower than the average salary for it, asking for loads of extras. It's not just money though - some of them are the equivalent of about 3 - 5 full time jobs which is a bigger problem. This industry has a fairly high turn over, and it's not unusual for me to see people leaving their role after 6months - 1 year.

To top it off, over half of related jobs I've seen recently are just temporary contracts of a year or two at most. If you don't have prior history of working contracted jobs like that, you can kiss goodbye to getting a mortgage. That's going to take another chunk out of their potential employees.

I see some adverts coming up repeatedly....and I'm like yeah....no wonder!

I wonder if this is happening in most sectors right now. That's worrying. I remember a slow-down like this just before the 2008 recession :/

It is worrying if all sectors are reducing head counts and stop recruiting. It will have a domino effect.

Tech, finance, retail, media and professional services are all cutting back. I think recession is already here, just waiting for the numbers to show it.

Which industries are growing though? So where did there be job opportunities?
Builders and trades?
Government might start spending and hiring.

Sorry you’re going through this.

However Tech recruitment is slowly improving. Typically budgetary planning in tech is done so we should start seeing reqs being posted now.

I was told my role would be made redundant November and after consultancy (7% of us being let go) the process completes end of this month.

Tech market is brutal right now. I’m in Customer Success.

myself and my colleagues are finding those of us with solid opportunities are using our network and not traditional advertising or recruiters.

@PloddingAlong21 - thank you so much for the solid advice. I do have a few contact but I have never networked for job hunting. I am a shy person and always feel uncomfortable of asking for help, especially pervious colleagues and managers.
Can you please share some tips on how to approach them (I am contacted to them through linkedin), which tone shall I use.
Thank you very much again.

I would love to know this too. I have never used my network for job hunting. I have just applied via advertising. I am not at risk but who knows what will happen.