Personal: 2nd job offer

Typical! I wait several months for a job role and two come along at once (just like buses). Yep, today I was kinda offered another post. This is a job which the agency (Computer Futures) originally called me about mid-December and said they had a potential position for me. They called me back twice last week to see if I was still available and to arrange a telephone interview for me today.

At 9am, Karl (of CF) called me to confirm the telephone chat – and I had to inform him that I had been offered a position that I was more than happy with (good role, good salary, good location and, by looks of things, a ‘good team’) and that I, unfortunately, was no longer interested. After much persuading, Karl managed to get me to agree to do the interview (partly due to me feeling guilty about the fact that he had spent so long chasing this vacancy) with the dangling carrot of a potential salary of twice what I had agreed to with my new job.

I’ve now just come off the telephone interview about the mainly Sun Solaris administration and web design role and, no disrespect to the company involved, but I don’t think I’ll bother with it. Yes, the role did sound interesting (and I do know quite a bit about the company) and the salary sounds interesting but a few things: I’ve already committed to one company and I had told Karl that I was starting next week at my new job. On the telephone I found out that, despite it being nearly a month since I was first contacted about it, this role may not be available for some time still. It was mainly “head-hunting” by the IT manager there to see if he could cost-justify replacing a contractor in the future.

If you are going to spend the money paying an agency to find people (agencies typically get around 10% of the persons salary or at least £2,000 – dependent on the agreement) at least have an idea when the role is going to be available. With the slow improvement in the techy market, people that are available one month aren’t necessarily going to be available in two months time – and if they are currently unemployed, they aren’t likely to want to “commit” to not being paid for several months on the off-chance that they might be offered a job for a single company. Especially when one of the candidates has, within a fortnight of sending his CV into a company, has been interviewed twice and offered a position that he is comfortable and happy with.

Many thanks to Karl at Computer Futures for putting the role my way, but unfortunately due to conditions beyond his control, it was too late. Oh well, such is life…