Are Companies preferring Permies than Contractors now?

[nemosdad]

Apart from the numerous calls I receive every day for permanent roles, I am getting many calls for perm roles which was advertised as contract roles, is there a change in the market now and whether companies are preferring permanent employees than contractors nowadays? I asked the same question to some consultants, they said they have no idea.

[tractor]

...

Apart from the numerous calls I receive every day for permanent roles, I am getting many calls for perm roles which was advertised as contract roles, is there a change in the market now and whether companies are preferring permanent employees than contractors nowadays? I asked the same question to some consultants, they said they have no idea.

I think expecting recruitment consultants to have any idea of anything is a fruitless exercise. A lot depends on your market, the area you are looking in geographically, the rate you are looking for etc. etc.

I have contracted for 25 years, I tell every agent I am ONLY looking for contract work. I get 4 emails about perm roles for every contract role enquiry. It's down to agents mass emailing every single contact in their database in the vain hope that someone will introduce someone for something they have a role for. It doesn't matter how many times you tell each agent, they take absolutely no notice.

[Eirikur]

I suppose in economic better times companies are willing to take on more permies and the ratio permie:contract vacancies changes in favour of perm.

The rest what tractor said.
I had to remove some terms from my CV to reduce this amount of spam. For example I did something with SAP 12 years ago, was spammed on a daily basis with SAP vacancies by email and phone. I removed the word SAP from my CV and it's gone down a lot since.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Current clientco is finding it VERY hard to recruit decent permies. I reckon there are probably hundreds of calls being made by agents for 1 or 2 positions here.

Perhaps the market in general is struggling to find permies too, so it appears that there are more positions when in fact it's just that they aren't being filled.

[cojak]

They know that there are a lot of wannabes in the market atm who will probably jump back into permiedom after 6 weeks on the bench.

[jmo21]

Currently looking for my next contract, and this is the vibe I'm getting from lots of agents, even the ones I've known for a while (not fully trusting what they say of course, but as much as you can ever trust an agent...erm.... wait, never!)

Tons of permie roles, nowhere near as many contract roles.

Been in back to back gigs for last 5 years with a number of side jobs over that time, so no rush on my side anyway, and not too worried.

[BlasterBates]

Is this a sign that the market is about to improve?