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How to move into the UK workplace
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Hi Guys,
Possibly the wrong area, but does anyone know any good recruiters in the UK? Or whats the best way to start getting some job interviews in Dev in London?
What sort of development do you do?
Your first thing should be to change your linkedin profile to say you are located in the UK. You will then appear on recruiters linkedin searches in the UK.
Upload your CV to all the UK recruiters you can find. Eg. reed.co.uk
Just google it. There are loads.0 -
Hi Guys,
Possibly the wrong area, but does anyone know any good recruiters in the UK? Or whats the best way to start getting some job interviews in Dev in London?
Firstly, be very careful when considering roles anywhere in the south east of England. Those salaries may look juicy, but the cost of living down there is very high as are taxes, so much less is left over compared to Ireland. Last time I seriously considered taking a role down there back in 2012 I calculated I would need an absolute minimum salary of £80,000 to live within an hour's commute and for the wife to raise our new baby at home, so I'd be the sole earner. That salary did not allow for a car, either, and we would have £5k of after-mandatory-life-expenses income left over. We would have basically been living hand to mouth. Marginal tax including council taxes in the UK after £43k near London is nearly 65% and towards 75% once you include the unavoidable annual public transport pass, so a +£10k salary boost only gives you an extra £2.5k into your pocket.
If you are young, single and can afford to bunk in with others earning less than £80k then working in the UK south east can be effective and London does have great, if very expensive, social activities. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague, I value commuting time at €100/hour which rapidly reduces the value of any job there as the UK doesn't typically pay you for commuting time. Child care, schooling and travel are all also very expensive.
Anyway, back to your question, in the past I've found UK recruiters won't touch you with an Irish address. So find yourself a UK address using a friend or renting a virtual mailbox with a real looking address - I've used Mailboxes Etc in the past and it worked just fine. Set up a UK forwarding phone to your Irish mobile and pretend you're in London.
You should find recruiters will start ringing you from 8.30am onwards and throughout the day. Most will be a bust as recruiters like to ring people to fill quota, but you'll get the odd interview forwarded. Then book a flight quick on Ryanair and turn up for the F2F. It's the usual process thereafter as if you were interviewing in Ireland.
Be prepared for this to be expensive as you'll be booking Ryanair usually with less than a week's notice, so it'll be €300 a pop or so, and maybe another €400 for the mailbox and the forwarding phone line. Once you're interviewing do NOT lie about living in London, most employers will be impressed by the lengths you've gone to, and if they like you they'll be generous about your relocation. Ireland is after all less further away than Scotland.
Good luck with your job hunt!
Niall0 -
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Firstly, be very careful when considering roles anywhere in the south east of England. Those salaries may look juicy, but the cost of living down there is very high as are taxes, so much less is left over compared to Ireland.
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I think that might be a bit of an overreaction.
Yes London is expensive but its not that bad.
£80K in London after all taxes including Council Tax (Includes housing waste collection) of 1500 per year works out at 34.6% Tax.
€94358 (£80k) in Ireland after all taxes including Bin Collection of €263 per year works out at 39.1% Tax.
£50k works out at 30.1% Tax.
€58964 (£50k) works out at 31.7% Tax.
Yes London is expensive and you do need to earn more here to keep the same quality of life but the UK tax system gives you better value for money if you earn a lot compared to Ireland.
Also the UK has a "Free" health care ie. You already payed for it out of your taxes but Ireland does not so depending on your situation this can save you a lot of money.
You dont need a car in London and a monthly travel card on the tube in London is cheaper than owning and running a car for a month.
You could make the same comparison of someone moving from a small country village in Ireland to Dublin.0 -
BrokenArrows wrote: »I think that might be a bit of an overreaction.
Yes London is expensive but its not that bad.
Last time I ran the numbers was in 2012.BrokenArrows wrote: ȣ80K in London after all taxes including Council Tax (Includes housing waste collection) of 1500 per year works out at 34.6% Tax.
€94358 (£80k) in Ireland after all taxes including Bin Collection of €263 per year works out at 39.1% Tax.
£50k works out at 30.1% Tax.
€58964 (£50k) works out at 31.7% Tax.
That's plausible for a single person because the UK flattens the tax curve for low earners, unearned income and high earners up to £150k. Ireland instead favours medium income married couples with children. My numbers were for a married couple, one infant, single earner. The UK, and especially the South East, is punishing for that profile relative to Ireland.Yes London is expensive and you do need to earn more here to keep the same quality of life but the UK tax system gives you better value for money if you earn a lot compared to Ireland.
Also the UK has a "Free" health care ie. You already payed for it out of your taxes but Ireland does not so depending on your situation this can save you a lot of money.
For single earners maybe; for dual earners definitely; for single earner families definitely not.
Also, generally middle class young families don't have much involvement with the health system, and maternity + birth + early years medical is free in Ireland. The NHS is really handy though if you are (a) older (b) unlucky (c) poor.You dont need a car in London and a monthly travel card on the tube in London is cheaper than owning and running a car for a month.
You could make the same comparison of someone moving from a small country village in Ireland to Dublin.
To live within an hour's commute of central London I found back in 2012 the best I could do was £9k annual travel pass per person. You're right public transport is cheaper than a car for a single person, but it definitely is not for a family.
I'm not at all disagreeing with your figures or arguments, and you may remember I did say for a single young person London can make a lot of sense. But for families with small children, and maybe even older children it's financial suicide unless both parents are earning good salaries. London and the wider south east has become very uncompetitive for young families in recent years, they really need a house price collapse to reset that enormous property bubble and get overheads down.
Niall0 -
Unless you are a raw junior or grad I'd expect the company to pay for my flights (and possibly for accommodation, I turn that down as I prefer to fly in and back the same day).0
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they really need a house price collapse to reset that enormous property bubble and get overheads down.
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Totally agree with this. Hopefully Brexit will bring about this. Myself and wife want to buy but we're waiting to see the effect of Brexit. If there is a mass exit from London once the rules are put in place then we may see a collapse.
At the very least Brexit has slowed the rate of price increase so its helping keep the prices down until we're ready to buy.
Not sure where you calculated your £9k commute costs per person from but my Zone 4 travel card into central london is £1860 per year (40 minute commite). The most expensive yearly card possible is £4,012 and thats for special zone 9 commutes way outside london.0 -
BrokenArrows wrote: »Not sure where you calculated your £9k commute costs per person from but my Zone 4 travel card into central london is £1860 per year (40 minute commite). The most expensive yearly card possible is £4,012 and thats for special zone 9 commutes way outside london.
I just checked the average season ticket price, in 2014 it was about £5k per person so it must be I am remembering the total commute costs for the family rather than per person. Sorry about that. I would also add that we were constrained in choice of house location by good schooling because it's still cheaper in the UK to live in an even more expensive good school district than to live in a bad one and send the children to private school.
Anyway, I still reckon England south east is an awful choice for working families with small children, Ireland on that is a much better choice. But once the children are older the difference shrinks, and you definitely get a much better deal in the UK if you have unearned income, though I hear upcoming changes to IR35 may cause very significant problems for UK contractors using dividend payments to reduce tax.
Niall0 -
I moved back from the UK in January, I had been living and working in Guildford. Due to childcare and other commitments the commute to London didn't work for me so I was on a significantly lower salary than I would have commanded. That being said we were both on good salaries and just about broke even. Childcare and rent hoovered up 60%+ of our net income.
If the commute hadn't been an issue I would have contracted. If you can do so within HMRC's rules for contracting it's very lucrative as you can pay yourself a low salary to keep in a lower tax band and take the balance as dividends (at a flat rate of 20% tax). However, if HMRC rule that you were in fact an employee then you could be left with a hefty tax bill so you need to do your research.
Also when I was there, salaried positions often came with a commuting allowance that would cover train tickets etc.0 -
Thanks for all the responses guys,
Im not married and i dont have kids, im 28. And Id be ok with sharing with people for a couple of years. Id be expecting to get around £50,000 to £60,000. So it seems like id be ok.
I've taken some of the advice already and received some calls.
Thanks Again0 -
I moved back from the UK in January, I had been living and working in Guildford. Due to childcare and other commitments the commute to London didn't work for me so I was on a significantly lower salary than I would have commanded. That being said we were both on good salaries and just about broke even. Childcare and rent hoovered up 60%+ of our net income.
Sorry to hear that, but it's probably for the best medium term.
One of the very big reasons we moved back home to Ireland instead of back to the UK after our spell in Canada was so my wife could raise our children for their first few years. Ireland has one of the worst provisions for childcare anywhere in the OECD, but the tax system isn't as tough on single earner families as elsewhere. Childcare, rent and commuting costs are less than one third of our net income, but the big uncosted sacrifice is the wife's former career.If the commute hadn't been an issue I would have contracted. If you can do so within HMRC's rules for contracting it's very lucrative as you can pay yourself a low salary to keep in a lower tax band and take the balance as dividends (at a flat rate of 20% tax). However, if HMRC rule that you were in fact an employee then you could be left with a hefty tax bill so you need to do your research.
Because of how unearned income is treated in the UK, contracting is generally more lucrative in the UK than in Ireland. However one of the few big advantages of contracting in Ireland is no IR35 regs creating uncertainty and twisting oneself into knots. I know Irish contractors at the same job and role for a decade, and with a good accountant you never enter the 40% rate of tax.Also when I was there, salaried positions often came with a commuting allowance that would cover train tickets etc.
We also have a similar public transport tax offset system here, though for some reason not as many Irish employers offset the scheme as you would expect. Irish contractors working near urban centres with their own company should be claiming subsidised public transport under the Taxsaver scheme which can lop as much as 30% off the bill.
Niall0 -
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Thanks for all the responses guys,
Im not married and i dont have kids, im 28. And Id be ok with sharing with people for a couple of years. Id be expecting to get around £50,000 to £60,000. So it seems like id be ok.
I've taken some of the advice already and received some calls.
Thanks Again
on 50-60k you will be in a great position. You wouldnt even need to share if you didnt want.0 -
Is there a particular reason, career-wise, why you want to work in development in London? I ask because, for a city of its size, the job market in London is surprisingly homogeneous - a lot of development jobs are in finance, gambling, insurance, etc. If that's what you're after, fair enough, but most friends I know who work in development moan about the lack of interesting roles in London.Hi Guys,
Possibly the wrong area, but does anyone know any good recruiters in the UK? Or whats the best way to start getting some job interviews in Dev in London?0 -
Is there a particular reason, career-wise, why you want to work in development in London? I ask because, for a city of its size, the job market in London is surprisingly homogeneous - a lot of development jobs are in finance, gambling, insurance, etc. If that's what you're after, fair enough, but most friends I know who work in development moan about the lack of interesting roles in London.
There has definitely been a general hollowing out of interesting dev roles in Europe in general over the past decade and a bit. Apart from a few pockets, all the really interesting roles seem to have moved to the US. Any time you get a startup doing anything really new, it gets bought and its main R&D tends to get moved to the US. I'm sure the pendulum will eventually swing back, but for now it sucks a bit.
I would also say London dev roles are shaped hugely by the cost of living there which has made unviable all dev roles not paying top tier rates. Finance tends to pay the most, and that crowds out most of the other roles. There are plenty of interesting dev roles in finance, especially if you're a whiz at low latency programming, but there are plenty of awful dev roles in finance that pay extremely well too. I know a few devs on a base pay of £180k a year with bonus topping up to past a quarter mil, but boy do they hate their jobs.
Niall0
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