Developer returning to Ireland after long absence

rainbow_beard

Hi all,

After nearly 10 years away I'll be returning to Ireland shortly and will have to start looking for a job. Not being familiar with the job market for software devs like me I'm hoping to get some pointers on the best resources for finding this type of work. For example are there certain job websites which specialize in technical recruiting? Is it common in Ireland to get recruited via linkedIn? If I wanted to start contracting instead of full time employment would I need to do anything different from a legal / tax point of view?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Stheno

rainbow_beard wrote: »

Hi all,

After nearly 10 years away I'll be returning to Ireland shortly and will have to start looking for a job. Not being familiar with the job market for software devs like me I'm hoping to get some pointers on the best resources for finding this type of work. For example are there certain job websites which specialize in technical recruiting? Is it common in Ireland to get recruited via linkedIn? If I wanted to start contracting instead of full time employment would I need to do anything different from a legal / tax point of view?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There's development forum on here which would answer your questions much better, let me know if you want me to move your thread.

As a starter what dev languages are you experienced in? And have you any exposure to the likes of devops, prince,agile?

rainbow_beard

Stheno wrote: »

rainbow_beard wrote: »

Hi all,

After nearly 10 years away I'll be returning to Ireland shortly and will have to start looking for a job. Not being familiar with the job market for software devs like me I'm hoping to get some pointers on the best resources for finding this type of work. For example are there certain job websites which specialize in technical recruiting? Is it common in Ireland to get recruited via linkedIn? If I wanted to start contracting instead of full time employment would I need to do anything different from a legal / tax point of view?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There's development forum on here which would answer your questions much better, let me know if you want me to move your thread.

As a starter what dev languages are you experienced in? And have you any exposure to the likes of devops, prince,agile?

thanks Stheno, yeah might be better in the development forum alright. Don't think the answer would be different for different languages but I've mostly done java, javascript, pl/sql but have used loads of other languages over the years. devops...kinda, agile yes (unfortunately) and I've never heard of prince!

listermint

rainbow_beard wrote: »

thanks Stheno, yeah might be better in the development forum alright. Don't think the answer would be different for different languages but I've mostly done java, javascript, pl/sql but have used loads of other languages over the years. devops...kinda, agile yes (unfortunately) and I've never heard of prince!

Get your name down with the likes of CPL and sigmar recruitment. You'll be sorted relatively quickly depending on experience

rainbow_beard

Would prefer to work directly with companies than through third party recruiters. They tend to be annoying and take an exorbitant cut of your earnings. Most of the irish jobs sites I've found seem to be full of these agency jobs. Think I'll be concentrating my efforts on LinkedIn

Stheno

Moved from work and jobs, new charter applies

The Hill Billy

I'm a contractor myself & find LinkedIn quite useful. But you'll probably find that many jobs on LinkedIn are posted there by recruitment agencies. It is just another channel that they use in the recruiting process.

By & large, by going through a recruiter - this should not affect your income. You state what your salary or rate expectations are & they then will charge the company a commission for placing you. It doesn't come out of what you get paid. More often than not - getting a permanent or contract gig directly with a company will not necessarily mean that you will be paid any more than if you got it through an agency. (There are exceptions of course.)

Also, if you are new to the contract market you may find that working through an agency is beneficial in terms of support they may provide for invoicing, taxes, etc. But whether you contract direct or via an agency - be sure to ask what their payment terms are so that it doesn't come as a surprise if you have to wait 30/45/60 days from submitting a timesheet to getting paid.

Best of luck with the job hunting!

magooly

Ive recently gone through the process of changing job and city so here is my experience of the 4 week process. I was focused on Dublin because really the opportunities are infinitely better than anywhere else.

Week 1.
Posted CV on Monster, phone went crazy the next morning when recruiters get hold of someone new. After a few days i had spoken to enough and took it offline again.
Updated linkedin and used their jobs portal to find and apply to roles i was interested in.
Posted my personal projects on github took on two of the companies coding challenges and posted the source on github also.

Week 2.
I set this week aside for tech calls and screening calls. I took 12 calls over 5 days almost all were setup by the recruiters from last week or the HR of the companies I contacted. The calls last up to an hour and vary widely both on professional and on subject matter. 2 guys made me feel like I was the interviewer.. 1 of them was blatantly wrong about a topic and when I pointed it out he was not impressed and said I was a fool. His colleague correctly agreed with me so that was fun!.

Week 3.
I spent the week in Dublin and sat 4 interviews face to face all of which were 3 hrs or more with a tech test.

Week 4
All 4 made me an offer and after 2 weeks i accepted the one I felt I could make the biggest impact in. Money is important but wasn't the driving factor, the challenge and the people I met on the day sealed it for me.

Some companies want you to complete coding challenges under a time limit. If you have the time then this is a great way to show your level via github. You should welcome any criticism as its an excellent discussion topic during interview. Remember interviews are about standing out.

If any company makes you wait around for a few days before getting back to you then they are already behind and you should leave them there.

Make sure you can whiteboard your current roles architecture in a non disclosure way.

If you decide to contract bear in mind it _may_ hinder your ability to get a mortgage. Also if you do wish to return to perm later you will find many companies wont want to deal with you as you may be seen as jumpy..

Finally if you have good experience the back yourself and dont settle for something average. Finding a job here is not the issue.. finding good quality accommodation at any price is an entirely different matter.

/end

14ned

rainbow_beard wrote: »

After nearly 10 years away I'll be returning to Ireland shortly and will have to start looking for a job.

The IT job market is currently buoyant. It's a good time to return.

Not being familiar with the job market for software devs like me I'm hoping to get some pointers on the best resources for finding this type of work. For example are there certain job websites which specialize in technical recruiting? Is it common in Ireland to get recruited via linkedIn?

Googling for "IT jobs Ireland" and uploading yourself to the top five returned sites works just fine. The Irish recruitment market is small and everybody knows one another, most of the recruiters have moved job multiple times between the big recruitment companies. You'll find those networks of friends which often spans agencies are much more important to getting hired than individual agencies (i.e. one recruiter will unofficially send your profile to another recruiter at a competing agency if it helps the other out in filling a backlogged role as a quid pro quo).

That both helps and hinders in a way. The big agencies pressure cooker their agents which creates an artificial competitive atmosphere, so they collectively go mad when a new candidate turns up. Your phone rings off the hook because they are all competing to get you spammed to all the roles they have open in an attempt to land your hiring commission first. But as a result, 95-98% of that interest is a waste of your time, it's spam for everybody concerned driven by excessive candidate landing commissions.

Me personally, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend this for anybody else, I deliberately don't give out my phone number. That causes most recruiters to skip you entirely, with a proportion of the rest sending you a furtive/annoyed email asking for your phone number so they can ring you (so they can spam you at the open roles). Tell them you'll ring them if you like the look of the roles they have in mind for you which they need to email to you first for you to check. Most will now ignore you as too much work, but some will send you the roles they were going to spam with your profile. You carefully review those, and write a custom approach for those that fit you. Send those to the recruiter who is usually more than glad to send custom written by you approaches for that role because it greatly increases your standout from the other spam.

Many recruiters will refuse to share their open roles as some sort of trade secret. Others quite correctly know that once they share the role, there is nothing stopping you applying to that company directly and cutting them out of their commission. On the former point, the reality in Ireland is that every agency has the same open roles more or less. If one recruiter won't share a role, another recruiter will share the same role. So you lose out on nothing. On the latter point, I would point out that recruiter commission is a HR expense item, it costs you absolutely nothing, so don't bypass the recruiter! Moreover, if you do bypass the recruiter, they do tell one another and you may get blacklisted for not being a team player. So don't bypass them, don't share the roles they show you nor show them to anyone else without asking for permission first.

Finally, as someone who has moved country four times now, I'd strongly recommend bringing at least six month's living expenses in cash when relocating. It can take a long time to land a role, some of the multinationals are simply incapable of hiring in any time less than six weeks. If it takes a month even to get to final stage interviews, that's potentially a minimum of three months to start a job after relocation, and don't forget it's another month again till your first pay cheque! Also, most rented accommodation will want two month's deposit, assuming you can find any rented accommodation at all of course.

If I wanted to start contracting instead of full time employment would I need to do anything different from a legal / tax point of view?

Chances are after a decade of commercial experience you'll take whichever role pays the most, so if it's permie then that's fine and if it's contract then that's fine too. If it's contract, I would strongly recommend you join an umbrella company for your first contract in Ireland. Learn the ropes over at least six to twelve months, and only then consider breaking out into your own self incorporation. I know you'll hand an enormous amount of money to the umbrella such that you'll be slightly worse off than a permie role, but consider those fees a training investment whilst you learn the Irish tax system and all those unofficial rules Revenue apply to IT contractors.

Niall

rainbow_beard

Will definitely use some of the great advice here, thanks so much.

I contacted a couple of places already and one thing I noticed is they are weird about providing salary ranges. Is this normal in Ireland? I don't want to waste my time completing custom applications only to find out later the pay is too low

rainbow_beard

Also can people recommend a company to use for becoming an umbrella employee or are they all pretty much the same?

Thanks

The Hill Billy

You may need to do a bit of research to see determine what the market rate is for your skills, experience & the role. Also bear in mind the overall package on offer if going permanent.

As for umbrella companies - I've used Fenero & found them to be spot on.

14ned

rainbow_beard wrote: »

I contacted a couple of places already and one thing I noticed is they are weird about providing salary ranges. Is this normal in Ireland? I don't want to waste my time completing custom applications only to find out later the pay is too low

Every recruiter is given a salary range, always. Otherwise they wouldn't know their commission for landing the role which is usually a percentage of the first year's salary.

Whether they tell you or not is another matter though. I've noticed they tend to not want to tell you if they think a salary range is below market pricing, whereas if it's average or above market they tend to be very quick to mention it. So if they're not telling you quickly, that means the same thing as "this position's salary range is below average in our opinion".

(As I've often said on these boards, I wouldn't necessarily discount below market paying roles quickly. They often come with many non-monetary benefits like a pleasant work environment and being happy to let you attend to surprise children and family events. As others have said, it's the package which includes lots of stuff other than pay)

Also can people recommend a company to use for becoming an umbrella employee or are they all pretty much the same?

There are full service options, a la carte service options, and everything in between. If you want to judge fees relative to a minimum possible, I've been running my self incorporation for about €650/year (€54/month) which is for my Accountant to peer review my end of year accounts and tell me what I wasn't allowed to do before it goes into Revenue. You can submit everything yourself of course, but I would view the Accountant's fee as a form of insurance reducing the tax penalty Revenue impose when audit time comes (they always find things wrong, it's a cost of doing business, and so long as your mistakes can be proven to not be malicious i.e. by hiring an Accountant they should just fine you the outstanding amount plus interest only).

Good luck with the relocation!

Niall

tiffbunny

rainbow_beard wrote: »

I contacted a couple of places already and one thing I noticed is they are weird about providing salary ranges. Is this normal in Ireland? I don't want to waste my time completing custom applications only to find out later the pay is too low

My company doesn't let us post salaries publicly but we're happy to discuss before you apply if you just call directly and ask. I suspect most companies are the same, and if the application is going to take you more time than the phonecall would, I'd recommend it. It also gets your name into their heads as an engaged applicant, even before your application has come through. (Assuming you come off as engaged and interested on the phone, but ask at least 1 other question besides salary.)

The problem with a lot of IT jobs is that they often aren't a flat salary, but are usually more about your specific overall package of skills compared to other applicants/ people in the company doing the same role. So while we might pay anywhere from €35k to €85k for a FakeLanguage dev, exactly how much we would offer YOU depends on YOUR specific FakeLanguage skillset and experience.

rainbow_beard wrote:

Also can people recommend a company to use for becoming an umbrella employee or are they all pretty much the same?

We point our contractors towards Icon Accounting when they ask. I've had no personal interactions with them myself, they just seem straightforward and pleasant to work with, and we've heard no complaints from the employees that are working through them.

Full disclosure: Once, they sent us cupcakes. I ate one.

Also, as a head's up, never, ever, ever have your umbrella company contact HR to try to negotiate a raise on your behalf. :rolleyes: If they even suggest this is remotely acceptable, take your business elsewhere.

With Java and PL/SQL you should be very easily sorted in the current market, career-wise it's a great time to have solid Oracle skills of nearly any variety.

rainbow_beard

Thanks again for all the advice guys. It's great to hear the market for devs is really strong right now

rainbow_beard

Just to follow up on this for anyone interested I ended up accepting a contract position and will be using an umbrella company. Like others mentioned the market is really good for devs right now and I ended up getting a better rate than I expected.