A year ago I was unexpectedly on the job market found it "difficult". Did some interim projects in the meantime but would prefer a permanent role.I saw Tony's comment on consultancies gearing up again....and we do now have 0.1% growth which is exciting.....but what is it like on the ground for people looking for a new job? Are you getting interviews?

I have noticed a small upturn in recruitment but it is highly selective and candidates are still being compared to a laundry list of requirements. I would say that this is symptomatic of a cautious start to the year and organisations are still being very careful to only hire people they can put out to work immediatley.I was out of work for 4 months and am only now returning to employment after a frustrating 2009 searching for a permanent role. To achieve this I have had to take a pay cut of 10% and just accept it. I suspect that this will mean that many people in similar circumstances to me will take the first realistic job offerred and will look to move again within the next 12 months so it could be that we see mid/end of 2010 as the point when the job market turns.I would suggest that you keep going (obviously) and the interviews will come. I think may have to take a view that first and foremost you get back to work and then look from there which may mean a lower salary than expectation.The tricky thing (and a question for recruiters who peruse this forum) is if these lower salaries are here to stay?

I wanted to really flag up the comment that <b>"organisations are still being very careful to only hire people they can put out to work immediately."</b>I&apos;ve heard this reiterated by pretty much every recruiter I&apos;ve been in touch with so far in 2010, so take this as a fact.This one factor explains so much of what I know must be a frustrating scenario for job-hunters right now - and hence why I wanted to reinforce the message. The implications of the above are significant:1) Firms are only hiring to fill very specific positions needed to staff projects that the firm is currently working on, has signed or that they have every expectation of winning. General "grow the practice" hiring simply isn&apos;t taking place, so you&apos;re either being hired to replace someone who&apos;s billable but leaving or to fill a gap in a project team for a known project.-> the implication of this is that firms will not diverge from a very specific set of criteria and you&apos;re wasting your time applying if you&apos;re not a very strong fit for those criteria. So focus your applications accordingly2) Hiring requirements are a moveable feast and part of the reason consulting firms are doing a lot of hiring via recruitment agencies at present is that this gives them scope to change their requirements or pull the plug on roles if the needs of the firm change mid-campaign. So that "critical hire" a recruitment consultant put you forward for may have gone cold for the simple reason that the consultancy has lost out on a contract or seen the contract start date delayed. Similarly HR may go all quiet on you for the simple reason that hiring needs have become uncertain but they don&apos;t want to lose you from the process as the need could be reinstated by a Partner at a moment&apos;s notice.The positive that you can take from this is that consulting firms have very little in the way of a "candidate pipeline" that they can use to fulfil any upturn in client demand. So as and when the market picks up even a small amount, this will translate immediately into new recruitment campaigns.Good luck to all out there searching right nowTony RestellTop-Consultant.com

yes- i would agree with both the above responses. Its still tough out there. Companies are hiring selectively ( although hiring , albeit very cautiously), and are really looking for candidates whao fit the bill extremely well and can hit the ground running.

What sort of view do people take on the wage reduction? Is 10% a reasonable drop or are firms still willing to bend for the right candidate?

Anon, thanks for sharing yr experiences.I found myself in exactly the same situation a couple of months ago. In the end I took a move outside of MC to a blue-chip in a similar role to what I&apos;d be doing as a consultant, and probably a 10% paycut on salary I would have liked.My thinking is to do this for a year, prove I can deliver internally (with a well known plc name) as well as a consultant then return to MC when the mkt has recovered. Of course if highly-political corporate life suits me, I may just keep going where I am ...Is my thinking sensible?

Update: I have had several conversations in the last 24 hours where Directors of recruitment firms have enthused that activity levels have rocketed since early January and are the best they&apos;ve been for 18-24 months. This is a major shift in sentiment and hopefully bodes very well for us all for the coming months of hiring activity.Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

An friend with 15 years experience didn&apos;t get interviews for the last 2 jobs he applied for. He called the recruiter for feedback and was told that both jobs received 350+ applications.If a client is hiring for one role they&apos;re not going to read through that stack of CVs so they might pick the best 5 candidates from the first 100 CVs for interview and bin the rest.There are so many high-quality recruits out there it&apos;s becoming hugely competitive.

It seems the Big4 advisory are all hiring at senior levels (with KPMG low balling on package as they always do)

Well, opposite to Tony&apos;s talks with Directors of recruitment, I have had access to some business plans of Systems Integrators & Big 4 and it doesn&apos;t look like the recruitment activity will rocket this year as said by our honorable host.I don&apos;t want to be negative but Tony has a stake on the appearances of the recruitment industry, so I would take his opinions with a bit of skepticism. It seems that the best chance the industry has is if the government decides to split up and reform/transform banks which will generate a demand on advisory services. On the other hand, it is election time for government, so it is always tricky to propose radical regulation/reforms/transformations.

Skeptic - that sounds rather like I&apos;m being compared to an estate agent talking up the housing market!! My credibility as a commentator on the market is too important an asset for me to give BS pronouncements on what&apos;s going on.I&apos;m on record here as saying hiring activity will not return to decent boom levels until the 2012 Olympics have been and gone (this year we&apos;ll see only 45% of the activity witnessed during the recent boom years; and only 60% of the previous peak during 2011).Two counter points of note though are:1) A decent increase in hiring isn&apos;t dependent on the consulting industry returning to growth. Even a modest increase in staff churn will necessitate quite an increase in hiring; and any change in the profile of client demand away from public sector projects towards private sector projects will also mean new blood is needed.2) Both PwC and KPMG have made very public announcements in recent weeks that they are gearing up to treble the size of their consulting businesses in the next years. Their words not mine. Of course they could end up with egg on their faces but their current activity suggests otherwise to me.Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

I think the reality is that hiring IS on the increase, but people are looking for the broad sweeping hiring programmes of the boom and missing out on the fact that hiring is now concentrated in more contracted streams.It really doesn&apos;t take a genius to see where the main trends are, and which firms are either hiring now or will need to hire in the next 3 - 6 months. The banks need new operating models to reassure stakeholders - and the government - that what happened will not be repeated. The appetite for risk continues unabated I suspect but risk management is suddently being given a much louder bark and harder bite internally - but how to do that? Individuals and funds are trying to box clever on asset allocations so wealth management is starting to uptick fast, as are advisory offerings to asset managers. Expect contraction in the telecoms market this year as at least one of the mobile operators is acquired, leading to a knee jerk reaction in the market. ICAAP, Solv 2, all that regulatory stuff, is churing up work non stop. M&A is picking up so fast that the banks are talking about lower hiring hurdles to bring enough people in. And this is just what I can see from my desk today.What&apos;s also coming is an influx of new retail banks this year - and I dont just mean Virgin. a number of new retail banks are looking to launch in the UK, and this will bring new consulting work from the ground up. Insiders at several of the big retail banks tell me they are already look at competitve strategy to be ready for this - it&apos;s when not if now.What&apos;s different now is that MC firms cannot justify hiring to the bench. If you have something to bring with you then the roles are available.

Uptick? Uptick?!You should be ashamed!

uptick? let&apos;s run it up the flagpole and take a rain check on that in the consulting space. space, the final frontier.p.s. how are PWC and KPMG going to treble their consulting businesses? who are they going to sell to? are they creating new &apos;space&apos; (to use a recruitment agent&apos;s favourite term) or are they planning to take away market share from somebody else? is there a web link or reference for this on the web? thx.

4 points to my detractors:1. MCs picking me up on &apos;uptick&apos; and &apos;space&apos;? how ironic that MCs, who practically invented the art of talking in acronyms, and making the simple complex, pick me up on this.2. If you cannot see the opportunities, maybe you just arent good enough to win them outside a boom market? 3. If you cannot see where KPMG and PwC could increase their market share then you are oblivious to what is happening in consulting. We have mandates flying at us from Accenture, PwC, EY, KPMG, Capco, Wipro, Capgemini, IBM to name just the ones with an FS interest. Hiring is increasing and the competition - for talented individuals - hotting up by the day.4. See point 2 as to why point 3 passed you by.

if you are a "talented individual" you shouldn&apos;t work for Accenture, PwC, EY, KPMG, Capco, Wipro, Capgemini, or IBM..

Re. the PwC and KPMG announcements, there was <a href=http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/support_services/article6738036.ece>a piece in the Times last year</a> quoting PwC&apos;s head of UK consulting. This was then followed up towards the end of the year by <a href=http://news.top-consultant.com/UK/news_story.aspX?ID=6302>an interview with Top-Consultant</a> in which the same message was extolled.Within the last two weeks KPMG have announced similar intentions via <a href=http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/support_services/article7010323.ece>a piece in the Times</a> quoting KPMG directly about their growth intentions.I&apos;m sure there are other similar pieces out there, but the key thing is that these messages have been pumped into the marketplace by the firms themselves, so failing to achieve significant consulting growth would mean egg on face for both of these Big 4 firms...Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Thanks TonyThese ambitious growth targets are not without thier risks. EY were all the rage 5 years ago, winning business and hiring aggressively, and are now rarely heard of. I haven&apos;t come across them in a bid for the past 3 yearsAnon

Great insights as ever Mars, keep it up!

As an ex big4 consultant who also spent 3 months last year on the job market, I can say from field experience that things picked up towards the tail of last year. After the first 3 months of no interviews, I secured 3 job offers, the first was a contract role, and I have since moved into a permanent position. At both organisations, they&apos;ve been frantically recruiting for positions (more IT project based as opposed to MC), non-the-less HR at my current job is now offering referall bonuses as they are already challenged to find the right skills.Now this may not be reflective of the market at large, but as someone who&apos;s been at the cold face, my personal experience is that things are picking up as IT spend is increasing. Plus I&apos;m getting calls from recrtuitment agencies to fill senior roles. Fingers crossed that 2010 will be a better year for all the job hunters still out there ... I feel your pain but am optimistic.

So are we saying that -10% to re-enter employment in MC right now is a good deal? I hate the idea of being had cheap but if needs must you get the top line moving.