Job hunting in London was quite different from other places where I have previously looked for a job. The market is huge, there are literally hundreds of companies looking for skilled developers and tens of recruitment agencies ranging from the “we do it all” to niche players who specialise in certain technologies, domains or methodologies (yep, there are companies who specialise in “Agile” I’d hazard a guess that there are hundreds - if not thousands - of job seekers in IT in London at the moment.

I have been told by various recruitment agents that 12 months ago the majority of the work was contract work but due to the economic crisis there has been a definite shift to permanent / full-time positions and up to 90% of current positions advertised in London are such. The few contract positions still around are mainly (surprisingly) in the investment finance sector - unavailable to most but the most hardcore (real-time Java, Swing, investment finance guru types).
Given the downturn, there are obviously also fewer permanent jobs going around but a few sectors are still hiring if not booming. Having spent about 2 months closely watching job ads and talking to recruiters I have observed a lot of activity in the following:

• Banking / Finance - a lot of activity - even though thousands have been laid off, the mergers, consolidation & cost cutting initiatives all involve IT systems - many opportunities abound
• E-Commerce - retailers are busy improving their on-line presence, upgrading web sites, adding new functionality (so they can shut physical stores to cut costs) - a lot of front-end & e-commerce work
• Gambling / Gaming - there seems to be an enourmous amount of activity in this sector here in London at the moment - why do people tend to spend money they don’t have in a crisis?
• Telecoms - most of the major telecoms providers seem to have some roles open at the moment. I found that they require high specialisation (i.e. pigeon-holing - sorry, we need somebody with Webwork and Apache CXF and not Spring MVC and Axis) and unless you match their spec exactly you’re unlikely to get an interview.

Having come from a more consulting type environment where every project used new / different technologies, I think the biggest pain was the focus on specialisation. I am assuming this is a result of such a big market. Several interviews I had focused on one or two technologies (e.g. Hibernate or Spring MVC) and if you didn’t know it to guru level then you’re out of luck, regardless of the fact that you’ve worked with a ton of similar technologies in the past. One of the most idiotic situations I had was when a recruitment agent invited me for a “chat” and then handed me a test consisting of 30 questions on the intricacies of Hibernate and Spring xml configuration syntax and told me his clients are looking for Hibernate and Spring professionals.

I used 3 websites to post my CV and look for positions:
http://www.jobserve.com - best interface & search, lots of jobs
http://www.jobsite.co.uk - ok interface & search, lots of jobs
http://www.cwjobs.co.uk - crap interface & very bad search functionality but contains lots of contract opportunities

There is also http://www.monster.co.uk but this site is badly organised, user unfriendly and has few IT opportunities compared to the others and apart from posting my CV on it I have not bothered with it.

Last minute tips:

1. CV should be short and tailored to position - for the London market the CV should not be more than 4 pages!
2. Refresh your knowledge - prepare before you start interviewing - if you haven’t coded in a while, fire up your IDE and write some code
3. Once you start looking - be ready to be technically tested anytime
4. Keep track of who you talk to and which companies you get forwarded to - with so many agents it’s very easy to have the same position presented by multiple agencies
5. Figure out how far you want to commute - there are many large IT companies in Greater London or within 50km of London (e.g. Reading). Find out whether you are close to a rail link - the trains are more reliable than the tube. (It makes more sense to first find a job and then an apartment)
6. Update your CV once a week and refresh it on the job sites - this way it will stay “current” on the site and more noticable to agents
7. Follow-up all applications with a phone call - the recruiters get swamped by applications for every job - make yourself stand out from the crowd by having a conversation with them about the position
8. Get a good internet connection - Initially I was able to cheaply share a FON connection but hotspots are few and far between in London. Unlike Canada there are very few coffee shops offering unlimited internet and you will usually have to pay for getting online as there aren’t many other options for when you’ve just arrived..

Looking for a job is a full-time job in itself so don’t get discouraged and let me know how it goes.
Good luck!

First post since we’ve crossed the ocean to come and live and work in London. The timing was pretty dreadful - recession headlines everywhere, companies going bankrupt left right and centre and thousands of workers being laid off. All of this just added to the usual stresses associated with moving countries like finding an apartment, setting up bank accounts (arguably more difficult than finding a job in the current climate) and generally getting used to the new locality (I am still overwhelmed by how crowded London and Europe are).

The last few months have been tough and stressful - the move itself, getting used to London, getting used to how crowded Europe and London are, the job hunt, finding an apartment, getting a bank account, etc. No matter how many times you’ve been through it all it’s still a pain in the b..

It looks like we’re slowly settling in though. We have an apartment, we both landed great jobs and we’ve even had our first holiday over on the continent - snowboarding in Italy’s South Tyrol.

Bring on the New Year!