Company reputation hurts prospects?

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Many companies are freezing recruitment right now, its the environment

One other minor option is to put (temp) against it.
In your view its temporary anyway
If quizzed you took it for x reason (local, you wanted to see the company). It was maternity cover and they said the person was almost certainly not coming back, but then person said they would be...
Really reasons for leaving are personal so I wouldn't worry about offering a different one to the truth.

I certainly agree with Hangtime, I held a very senior position and decided I really didn't want to operate at that level, I didn't like sitting with a board of psychopaths, and neither did I like the work life balance, nor not being hands on
I haven't looked for a job since but people are always surprised how I went that way when they find out what I did previously.
Makes me wonder about my next move which will likely be this year since we are shedding loads of roles as the new CEO seems to be trying to emulate Elon and destroy every department thats not R&D or hands on manufacturing.

 

[Worthy]

It's the time of the year and the weird market issues at the moment. Lots of companies over-recruited last year when it was impossible to get hold of people, and the pipelines may not have matured as people expected them too, it's a similar thing where I work, so they've turned off the recruitment taps for now.

If it's full of idiots (I'm assuming you mean they're not very skilled), can you not stick it out and you'll be running the place in a year?

 

[Felon]

If it's full of idiots (I'm assuming you mean they're not very skilled), can you not stick it out and you'll be running the place in a year?

Meh, I mean there's no point really - most of the customers have left or are leaving, there's no critical mass of new business, opportunities, growth or expansion - it's just a diminishing business.

Because of that, there's no appetite, budget or real reason to push hard and make a product or system that makes sense, because the whole thing is being slowly wound down, so it's just depressing lol.

 

[Rroff]

I wouldn't just remove it or lie about it - but glossing over it no one really cares if you've got a fairly well rounded out career in general in my experience most companies won't dig too deep. Like Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said you are better off just covering it as various/temporary work in X role kind of thing rather than saying you were off travelling or something.

I've actually found being too specific on the CV seems to hurt more than it helps - most employers I think tend to want to get a good overview of your experience and general work/role details first rather than wade through specific dates and other complexities, etc. (to a degree).

EDIT: If you are relatively mobile - there seems to be quite a lot of decent IT opportunities in the South West at the moment especially towards like Exeter, etc. both of my brothers have recently jumped to better jobs with the opportunities available and unlike some other parts of the country doesn't seem to be seeing the same level of recruitment freezing which seems to be going on.

 

[dowie]

Then I spoke to a recruiter who laughed, "Yeah, we don't normally take people from there"... and ever since it's left me a bit rattled.

I'm considering deleting every aspect of this role from my CV and linkedin, as I've started to wonder whether being associated with this place is hurting my prospects, and it might just be easier during any interview to say "I decided to take 6 months out" or something...

Am I being paranoid? :/

Yes! If it's a "small(ish)" company then how would they even have an opinion of people who have worked there, also working there for 6 months doesn't immediately negate your prior experience at Amazon and the places you've worked before then.

The fact is you got into a well-known big tech firm and lasted there for a bit, that's a solid signal regardless... recruiters can talk utter BS rather a lot, a simpler explanation is that the job market has changed dramatically in the past 6 months (even Meta is allegedly reneging offers for new grads in the UK).

Just take your time and find a role that you'll have a high chance of enjoying or at least tolerating for 18 months+ as you probably don't want two 6-month stints in a row on the CV (unless contracting).

 

[Felon]

I think I'm just being fragile :|

 

[dowie]

6 month gap on your CV? Just say you took some time off after the covid years to travel the world, spend time with family/pet gerbils or whatever.

Don't do this, especially if you're anywhere near getting promoted to senior roles, this can easily come back to hurt you if a new employer requires external background checking. If you put down that you went traveling then an obvious thing to ask for is evidence of flights etc... Obvs plenty of jobs don't require this but some firms with a culture of secrecy and tight NDAs can require it for all employees and other firms will require it for managers above a certain grade. In the latter case they've perhaps carried a lie for most of their career until they get promoted to an exec role where the board requires due diligence and the third-party security/investigation company rumbles them.

I wouldn't just remove it or lie about it - but glossing over it no one really cares if you've got a fairly well rounded out career in general in my experience most companies won't dig too deep.

^^^ this, keep it on there, you don't need to be overly negative about them but if you're leaving a role after 6 months because it wasn't a good fit then literally saying it wasn't a good fit (the truth) is perfectly valid.

 

[thewanted]

Meh, I mean there's no point really - most of the customers have left or are leaving, there's no critical mass of new business, opportunities, growth or expansion - it's just a diminishing business.

Because of that, there's no appetite, budget or real reason to push hard and make a product or system that makes sense, because the whole thing is being slowly wound down, so it's just depressing lol.

Rackspace?

 

[blairw]

Your experience at AWS makes you a hire for most places - the market is just very cold at the moment, it’ll pick up again.

 

[malachi]

Your experience at AWS makes you a hire for most places - the market is just very cold at the moment, it’ll pick up again.

Yet we have companies saying they are struggling to fill vacancies but we have the other side laying people off

For me the job market has gone cold compared to before Christmas.

 

[D.P.]

The it market went from massive vacancies and name your own salary, to laying off a chunk of the workforce and a hiring freeze within 3-4 months.


But to answer OP, unless you work for something which has questionable morals, then prior employers are not that important. E.g. if you worked for big tobacco then many people would question why you would work for companies that are quite literally evil and kill people.

 

[Felon]

It's definitley a lot harder out there, way harder.

I was lined up for an interview with a largish cloud provider, then I got an email from them saying "due to the economic situation and our budget constraints, we've decided to put the role you were interviewing for on hold" and it's basically just been cut from the department.
Currently interviewing for one of the big CDN providers, I managed to get a referal from an existing employee which helped - but they have so many applicants, I think even getting an interview was a result in itself!

But to answer OP, unless you work for something which has questionable morals, then prior employers are not that important. E.g. if you worked for big tobacco then many people would question why you would work for companies that are quite literally evil and kill people.

Yeah I think I was just being a bit pretentious and big-headed to be honest, but I think it mostly came from being frustrated as hell with my current situation.. I think if the current opportunity doesn't progress, I'll probably quit looking for a while, and just lay low and make-do with what I've got, until things perk up a bit in the summer, hopefully.

 

[HangTime]

It's definitely cooled off as I receive less unsolicited approaches, however part of that is seasonal (mid-December to Mid-Jan is always quiet due to holidays and budget cycle constraints, you'll find people want to hire but they aren't allowed to create the requisition until the new year, then lose a week or two to admin and getting everything posted). What is maybe different is the tech redundancies started a bit before that and it will be interesting to see how/if things pick up again over the next month or so. Even my employer, who were operating a sort of land-grab approach last year (headcount grew by approx 50%) have been paring back contract resource recently so basically flatlining in terms of number of people.

 

[ik9000]

But what is the company to be this bad!!?? ISIS? Passport Office?

Cambridge Analytica?

 

[CapitalOne]

In my industry (Financial Services) there are lots of firms with headcount freezes, Goldmans is a bit of an outlier but assume annual budgets (inc. tech) are about 30% down on last year. I'd expect any potential upwards revisions to happen end H1 at the earliest and more likely end of year (earnings season).

This is one of those times where the contractors and consultants are gone, even the lower cost outsourcers have been cut down.

Of course budget cycles tend to be a long game so unless there are some bright signs in the economy this could last until well into next year unfortunately. In a cab going to work yesterday I saw plenty of posters "Fired by Twitter or Meta? Move to Vilnius". I can't remember the name of the firm (GFT maybe?) we used to use over there but I imagine those EU countries looking to become tech hubs could do quite well.

 

[D.P.]

MS laid off 10k, Google 12k. Lots fo cuts in tech sector on top of the cuts in October -november.

 

[sigma]

Yet we have companies saying they are struggling to fill vacancies but we have the other side laying people off

For me the job market has gone cold compared to before Christmas.

I've never bought into the 'struggling to fill vacancies', it's a load of testicles. Sure, in some very niche areas or in jobs that nobody wants to do (like fruit picking) but the rest is just nonsense. Most jobs I saw in the past, especially at a recognisable name, would have 100+ applications.

 

[malachi]

I've never bought into the 'struggling to fill vacancies', it's a load of testicles. Sure, in some very niche areas or in jobs that nobody wants to do (like fruit picking) but the rest is just nonsense.

In my job we are struggling to find another IT System Engineer for nearly a year. For the passed 7 months we had 3 people who took the offer then changed their minds a week later.

After 10 months, our dev team has finally found an Software Dev who will start next month. So there is some truth to it, non of these roles are niche.

 

[HangTime]

Getting 100+ applications doesn't mean they are getting suitable quality of applicants. Now you could argue some companies are overly picky or just not pitching their roles the right way, but the fact remains that for whatever reason some companies have struggled to fill vacancies.

My wife has had something fluctuating between 1.5-2.5FTE (not sure of exact number) of vacancies in her team over the past year or so, just can't get the staff, people pulling out of interview processes, changing their minds, natural attrition of other people leaving, needing to backfill maternity etc.

@Rroff posted something here a couple of months back saying something ludicrous like over 50% of people they hire don't last more than a week so they are perpetually understaffed.

Official stats had record vacancy levels last year, 1.3 million or something like that.

 

[Rroff]

@Rroff posted something here a couple of months back saying something ludicrous like over 50% of people they hire don't last more than a week so they are perpetually understaffed.

Can't remember if I updated/posted about it or not but turned out for one of the roles the agency had copied and pasted the information from the wrong job role so we had quite a few people who turned up where it wasn't the job they were expecting :s but in general we've been having those kind of issues across most roles. Seems to be loads of people at the moment who want a job where they don't actually have to work.

I've never bought into the 'struggling to fill vacancies', it's a load of testicles. Sure, in some very niche areas or in jobs that nobody wants to do (like fruit picking) but the rest is just nonsense. Most jobs I saw in the past, especially at a recognisable name, would have 100+ applications.

As HangTime alluded to above we've had a lot of trouble filling roles recently, which we've not had in the past, and it isn't due to a shortage of applications. A lot of it seems to boil down to a sudden massive increase, possibly pandemic linked, of people not actually wanting a job where they have to do some work - though more complex than that overall.