What Occuring

As usual I have been keeping an eye on the Jobs Market, checking out the availabilty of consultants and roles.
As you will see from previous posts I have been guaging the state of the Oracle BI / Siebel Analytics market by the number of jobs advertised, and number consultants I know who are looking.
With the current doom and gloom being propogated by the BBC among many others it has been noticable how much the BI market is being talked up, but what is th real picture?

We have certainly been kept busy, and could be on two or three more projects now, as well as doing all the marketing stuff, playing with the new technology and writing updates for the book. And of course there is the conference presentation to finish up.

I do know of a couple of contractors that are at home waiting for the phone to ring, and some projects are closing soon (particularyly a big govenment bank one), but this level is not unusual.

The biggest issue I can see is the lack of roles being advertised in the UK for OBIEE and Siebel Analytics. I can’t remember the last jobserve advert for Analaytics, and there is only one in the whole of Europe right now.
OBIEE has fared only slightly better, with 2 roles out there right now. But there never has been too many adverts anyway. This may be due to more direct networking, particularly using LinkedIn, and maybe due to an increase in the number of consultancies advertising themselves as Oracle BI experts. However, 2 is down from the peeks we had last year.

Beware the Squeeze

In the past downturns the agencies have strugggled to maintain their income and have therefore squeezed more from the margins. They do this by telling clients that good consultants are hard to come by as they do not look for new projects in a recession, and are therefore still expensive. At the same time they tell the consultants that the rates have come down due to the recession! Always ask the agent what margin they are on, anything more than 15% is taking the mickey.

If you are looking then do get in touch I can possibly point you to opportunities my network (and no I dont charge!).

BIG NEWS

Look out next week for some BIG NEWS which we are all excited about here at Majendi.

A.