back to article Hunting for IT staff? Lost your job during the pandemic? Sysadmin vacancies – and a free job ads offer – inside

We've received a couple of solid responses to our offer last week, in which we invited organizations seeking tech staff to tackle the coronovirus pandemic to send in their recruitment ads and we would run them for free online. No catch, no snark, nor strings attached. We're a bit worried we made that offer too specific, or …

  1. chivo243 Silver badge

    can't travel

    can't help out. Soz...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: can't travel

      Indeed. Is attending an interview a sufficiently good reason for travel? Is a putative new employer really going to want to hire someone no-one at the company has ever met in person, and who will then work entirely in isolation and from home for months? Sure it could be done, and I guess it might work better in IT than for other jobs, ... but it would seem a stretch in many cases. Especially if you are not a perfect-fit to the job description, or to the company itself.

      Hmm.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: can't travel

        I think that reason contributes, but I also think most employers don't have the resources to start hiring right now. A lot of smaller places are quite low on cash and don't know whether income will head up any time soon. Even those that aren't worried about their finances probably have all their existing employees tied up in other administration. They can't take the time of the existing admins to prove that the new one will know what they're talking about or worse, to train them, because the existing admins have to respond to every support request about remote working stuff not working. And the people who would do the nontechnical side of the interview are probably running triage with other business matters that aren't getting handled well in the chaos. To all out their on either side of this issue, all I can say is that I'm sorry for the chaos and I wish you all the best.

      2. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Re: can't travel

        Washington state was one of the first places in the US to start locking down. IT infrastructure was in the list of essential services, so any work in that regard is immune to the no-travel orders. I expect this will be a near-universal exemption.

        But any IT job that doesn't involve attaching cables to something better permit wfh.

      3. oldfartuk

        Re: can't travel

        pish, you're all IT pansies . The first sysadmin job i got was no interview, you just had to RRTY your CV to an IP adddress, coded in EBDIC. That sorted out the men from the boys.

        1. The First Dave
          Headmaster

          Re: can't travel

          Downvoted for not knowing how to spell EBCDIC

          1. Eecahmap

            Re: can't travel

            And maybe for misspelling RTTY?

            1. Cederic Silver badge

              Re: can't travel

              To be fair, he didn't say that he got the job.

              1. The First Dave

                Re: can't travel

                "The first sysadmin job i got ... was no interview"

                1. Cederic Silver badge

                  Re: can't travel

                  Hmm. You're right. That's worrying.

  2. theExecutive

    What a selection

    #sarcasm

    1. Andy Denton

      Re: What a selection

      It's still two more job adverts than you've posted.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    good on el reg

    It's damn decent, well done people.

  4. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Well done El Reg.

    This is a great initiative and will hopefully be 100% more effective than a lot of the agencies out there who seem to be mostly staffed by people who seem to know nothing about the technologies or roles that they are recruiting for in the first place, which in turn actually makes the getting of a new role twice as hard as it needs be in these difficult times (or any time for that matter).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well done El Reg.

      Before the lockdown I was looking for another job, and found one particular recruiter (employed in his own agency) very helpful.

      He used to be an IT director in a small company and I believe he used to be a software developer before that. So he knew his shit, so discussing the company, the job, the shit GlassDoor reviews, and whatever else wasn't nut-crunchingly bad.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well done El Reg.

      Including salary and working hours (or flexibility thereof) are things that need to be included in the blurb up front however, please.

      I'm sure none of us want to waste even a second of unnecessary time having to click through to discover which of those companies are too cheapskate to pay a decent professional salary for skilled work.

      1. Bronek Kozicki

        Re: Well done El Reg.

        I suspect that if you cannot be bothered to click on the role description then you are probably not interested in the position anyway.

  5. short a sandwich
    Pint

    Beer

    For use of nor.

  6. Robert Helpmann??
    Childcatcher

    Surreal Times

    The contract I work under is being subsumed by one held by the parent agency for the one I support. We've shifted to as much of a remote work model as we can (rotating shifts of who is allowed on site, reduced hours on site) to the point where the place is a figurative ghost town, and we are still moving forward with the change in leadership. I might not meet my new overlords for months while working in a sector that still requires continuous on-site support. It's the new normal I guess.

  7. g00ner

    Contractor looking

    SCCM design and implementation SME looking for some work in exchange for beer vouchers

  8. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    This

    "I think that reason contributes, but I also think most employers don't have the resources to start hiring right now."

    This. Here in the states it really appears the economy has collapsed. The most alarming thing I've seen, going onto Upwork which previously would have had several pages (dozens) of IT listings per hour, now it has 4-5 listings per hour, it's dropped probably at least 90%. About half of those are people wanting remote desktops and FreePBX setups done (the other half are completely regular listings.) Oddly, these remaining listings are not having larger amounts of applicants pile onto them, application volume seems to have also dropped by 90%.

    I took some graduate-level CS classes about 20 years ago; I think with several universities here opening up there online courses systems, I might take a few more of them...

    To those at El Reg, good on you for having free listings though! Hopefully once businesses get over the initial shock, they will start needing some IT work done again and the listings will flow.

  9. DrXym

    Funnily enough

    Recruiters on LinkedIn have been more relentless and indiscriminate than ever for spamming me. I've gotten a general uptick in in-mails offering me the exciting chance to work for less money at the other end of my country or in other countries altogether. One guy sent me 5 in-mails for the same job (200 miles away) over the course of two weeks.

    I guess they've got to keep themselves busy working from home too.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Funnily enough

      Well, yes, those commissions won't earn themselves :-)

  10. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge
    Pint

    Cheers m'dears.

  11. Cederic Silver badge

    job market is broken

    I'm getting the same number of notifications through that I was getting a month ago but now most of the roles, when you follow the link, are showing as "This role is not available." or "Job does not exist."

    More than one company (and no, I won't name the ones I've spotted) has closed recruitment. Their sites have gone from over 60 jobs available to none in the space of a couple of days.

    This is understandable and reasonable (and why I'm not naming anybody). Facing an uncertain economy and the risk of needing to close or reduce staff numbers in various divisions and departments, avoiding hiring new staff makes a lot of sense for multiple business reasons.

    There are still jobs out there, and companies hiring in particular people with experience and skills relating to cloud technologies, but the market overall is in a dire state.

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