If you apply for a job, the experience you list should match the tech stack in the job spec. Don't list roles that aren't relevant (i.e. no .net if it's a Python role).
I helped hire a DS this week. Their CV was among 20 excellent candidates all in London with their latest role matching most of the tech stack we're looking for. All the candidates are in London. This is what you're competing against.
While I appreciate that there's a need to filter candidates, surely it proves that there is either no shortage of experienced developers out there, or that companies would rather hire less experienced devs with more relevant experience? If the latter is true, then companies shouldn't moan about a shortage in talent when there is obviously demand for more senior roles.
If candidates could see the other applicant's CVs it would kick off an arms race.
Two years ago, I took a role in a tech stack I've never used before, and in less than a month I was productive in Node and Rails. I work with half a dozen developers that switched from one stack to another, and regularly do so to use the best tool for the job, and it's not as hard as some companies make it out to be.
IMO there are few, if any, tangible signs of a shortage locally.
There's a definite shortage outside of London, although few companies seem to want to up their salaries to attract experienced talent. One of the reasons I switched stack was because I would get recruiters emailing every day with new roles, but rarely anything that paid over £45k in Bristol.
In your experience, as a Londoner, is there a demand for experienced devs? I would've thought that big companies would always be looking for developers.
> a few of them were for companies hiring in my exact stack, while also saying they sponsor visas
So you are looking for a job at a very large company which will be ok with you commuting from Bristol to London and that will also sponsor you to move to America?? Thats an extremely specific company-search, I don't think its fair to say that that is any way representative of what its like for senior developers to find jobs.
Also google maps shows that the train from Bristol to London takes 1 hour 40min, so assuming it takes 30mins to the station on both sides, thats about 5 hours a day spent commuting, and I haven't even looked at the cost either. Even if you get 1-2 days a week working from home thats going to be a lot of travelling, as an employer I would be worried that after 6 months or so you will quit because of long commute times.
So, this would be a developer with ten years experience looking for essentially "any" developer role in London. Easy, right? Apparently not. In the time it's taken me to reply to these messages I've had another rejection from JPMorgan Chase...
As an aside, I've done the commute from Bristol to London a few times for work, and while there are people that do it every day it's a killer, and you'd be lucky to get from Bristol Temple Meads to Liverpool Street at 9am if you get the first train in.
Ah ok, that makes a lot more sense then.
> So, this would be a developer with ten years experience looking for essentially "any" developer role in London.
Really? So you have been working in Bristol as a developer for 10 years but can't manage to get a job in London? Thats mad. At what stage to you get rejected? i.e. CV rejected, initial phonecall or in person interview? Do they give you any reasons?
Initially, I thought it'd be something to do with my CV, but that wouldn't explain why I don't struggle to find work in Bristol - if anything I get hounded on LinkedIn a few times a day by recruiters in the South West.
If I wanted to get a senior-level job in my local area, I can do this pretty easily. I have experience with the .NET framework, so those jobs have been available to me for years, and usually an interview is a week away from an initial application, or from one of the many recruitment emails I get. The same goes for Ruby jobs, since I have been using Ruby for about a year with public projects I can refer to.
Now, let's move that to larger companies outside of my local area. I've recently been looking at roles in London for larger companies, since I would like to move to NYC in the not-so-distant future. If I apply for a role at a big tech company I'm almost guaranteed to be rejected (FAANG, Twitter, IBM, Oracle, Adobe). If I apply for a role at a larger multinational company - the likes of JP Morgan, Bloomberg, Buzzfeed, Deliveroo, WorkDay, any investment bank based in London, IBM, Squarespace, the list goes on - and I'll be rejected. In fact, in the last month I can count over thirty rejections. This is for a developer with ten years experience, albeit at startups and agencies, but someone that has put time in.
IMO, it boils down to a handful of things:
1. Companies want to hire developers that match their criteria perfectly. I can apply for a Java role with recent, but limited, Java experience, and be rejected. This is because I'm not a Java developer. The same goes for Python, despite the fact that I've worked with Python and Django on a project last year. I'd be rejected by most companies because I'm not a Python developer, despite...you know, knowing enough Python to get up to speed quickly.
2. Companies would rather interview someone nearby. Bear in mind that I can get to London by 9 if I get the first train in from Bristol, so travel isn't a huge issue, but in my experience a lot of companies would rather interview someone that can interview on-site in a week, and usually someone a few hours away will want time to arrange something.
3. Somewhat against the first point, many companies will happily hire a less experienced person because they are cheaper. If they cannot get someone that matches the first criteria, they'll get the cheapest person.
4. Most posts on job boards are bullshit. Out of the thirty rejections this month, a few of them were for companies hiring in my exact stack, while also saying they sponsor visas. Those ads are still up on Stack Overflow Jobs, or have been renewed, but they weren't interested in me - even when my stack and experience almost perfectly align with theirs.
If you were to ask me a few months ago whether I thought finding another job as an experienced developer would be hard, I'd say no, because I am in demand in a reasonably big tech city in my country, but after the last month I'm not so sure. Many of these roles obviously get filled, so either there's something about my specific experience that turns people off, or this experienced developer shortage is down to companies wanting one (or more) of the above criteria to be met before considering a hire.