Does cord give jobseekers more control?

In the past when I've moved job, I have felt at the mercy of the opportunities that are available and, more specifically, how those opportunities are presented by the recruitment agents that invariably in software engineering stand between the candidate and the employer. And you're never entirely sure what you're getting. So that does lead to a bit of difficulty about making the right decision because you have very, very little information. By the time you have enough information to really figure out whether this is the right thing for you, you're already so emotionally invested in the journey that, frankly, it's too big a thing to say no.

So I think there have been maybe one or two cases where I found myself in an organisation, having just started and it's maybe not fitting as well as I thought. And I don't want to overplay that. It's not really been a big factor. Maybe I've just been lucky with the places I've managed to get to, but certainly been aware that when I'm walking in the door on day one, I don't really know where I'm getting to. There’s a bunch of reasons for that. One of them is that generally it is presented as an employer's market all the time. It's presented as there being a definite power differential between the candidate and the employer. You're only permitted to apply for things that are on job boards, with proper job descriptions. You're only able to talk to the employer through this intermediary and all the way you are proving to the employer that you are worthy of their consideration.

We've got to temper what I'm about to say with the fact that in the last six to nine months in software engineering, it has clearly not been an employer's market and that's probably worth just seasoning the conversation with, but when I first got the invite to cord - and that must be a year ago now - I found that it was turned on its head and as a candidate, that was really big for me because I was able now to go and look at way more variety of jobs, see a lot more information about the organisations that were there and get the sense that the shoe was on the other foot now, the employers had to make it clear to me why they were worthy of my consideration.