I have a great job at the moment that I really like but my family misses being in the UK and I was thinking about finding work in the North East of England to be near my family especially when the kids are growing up.

Anyway I never see many jobs in the North. Is it still best to just send a CV to agencies? Somebody said that a lot of agencies use Linked in to head hunt people. I am quite prepared to wait so I can wait for something to turn up. I just thought I would get a CV done.

In my current job I do a lot of different stuff from pure development to business analysis, and project management. What’s the best way to play this as most jobs have a big list of technical skills, which maybe I don’t have, but in my book these are the least useful skills in a way as you can find the way to do most things on the web now if you have half a brain. Getting someone who will listen to the customer and turn this into a functioning useful bit of software is much more important. I suppose when people are recruiting they are looking for specific roles to fill. The battery is nearly out on my laptop but any useful tips would be great.

In software?
Yes, LinkedIn is a v good start. Get your profile there, connect with everyone and anyone you know. Then look for jobs on t’internet. The one from The Register would be good. But how are you going to manage interviews? Th NE has quite a few software companies but there are fewer finance-linked high payers.

I was not sure how to go about it as I said I like my job so don’t want to do anything too blatant. I do work for an international bank at the moment.

What sort of developer are you?
We’re looking .NET application developers (2 in fact)….
based in Sunderland.

Oracle PLSQL, batch, DB design, tuning etc, done Microsoft stuff in the past but been doing pure Oracle for the last few years. More looking at a year or two year plan rather than next week but thanks for the heads up.

Jobserve.com
jobsite.com

Only ever used those two. Your CV will spread like wildfire.

How do you sell your soft skills though as most jobs seem to want some obscure language or experience of using a tool that in reality takes about a day for anybody worth their salt to pick up? I will get a CV together but was not sure how to angle it.

Play to your strengths. Most jobs look for core skills like .net, Java etc, and the extras are nice-to-haves that will probably be overlooked if you want a permie job.

If you are a jack of all trades you might find it hard. Languages might take a day or two to pick up but years to master the subtleties – it’s the subtleties that people want.

In my current job I do a lot of different stuff from pure development to business analysis, and project management

IMO this could count against you. Best thing would be to hammer home how good you are at each role with concrete examples of what you did and why you are so sht hot at it. People tend to want dedicated geeks to do development though.

You sound like a consultant to me. I’d be looking at SIs or if you have specific product knowledge PS arms of vendors. I suspect wanting to live in the grim North will rule out vendors but there are SIs up there.

I suppose I would start by giving a summary/mission statement of your skills, both technical and soft. As you say, soft are more difficult to find and I would emphasise these. Then give a summary of experience and finally qualifications, and other stuff. Then send that to some agencies in that area and see what turns up.

+1 for linkedin – an up to date profile attracts recruiters, plus there’s a few groups that post jobs.

A mate of mine works for these guys http://www.ic-software.co.uk – might be worth giving them a call – ask for Alex Fothergill.

I know a bloke in the NW…

You sound like a development DBA to me.
+1 linkedin and pop a few searches in cwjobs

Trouble with my skills are that my current role from a technical point of view is too specialised. I have done 5 years of vb, asp, vb forms, vb script and sqlserver/Oracle for the last 4 years I have been a pure Oracle developer and for most jobs they want java and Oracle. Thanks for the tips.

my skills are that my current role from a technical point of view is too specialised

All software developers have this problem. Unless their core work is the mainstream programming language of the day. And that’s always changing.

Sage in Newcastle were taking a few developers on recently – mate starts there next month

maybe worth looking them up?

If you’re a good developer, you will be a useful asset to the company – regardless of the language.

We have a complicated business system/platform, written by ONE guy, in many different languages (from Perl to C# to Java to SQL to VBA to COBOL!). He’s a developer, not a programmer.

Jobsite, JobServe, Monster, CW Jobs, El Reg, LinkedIn, Facebook (look up old colleagues!), phone Oracle DB companies directly… no harm in asking.

Phone up recruitment agencies and register in person – they will route your call through to someone who deals with your skill set. The personal contact is ESSENTIAL, as you want them on your side – and relevant job – YOU want to hear about it first, before your competitors.

I’m based in the NW (Lancs) – but don’t know any contacts within businesses who use Oracle… I’ll ask around though 🙂

If you can do mobile dev (Android/Java, iPhone/Objective-C, Win7/.NET), I know of a position opening soon…