Morning All...

[IL Cattivo]

Hi Everyone,

Having recently been made redundant from my permie position of 16 years I've now thought the time is right to move into the contracting arena. If I don't do it now, probably never will...

I have actually just completed my 1st contract where a client contacted me directly via LinkedIn requiring my particular set of skills urgently. Was a pretty important, time restrictive project which I managed to nail over months work into a fraction of the time. Hoping it leads onto bigger and better things in the near future as I got some fantastic feedback as a result of the work I did for them.

Must say I am amazed at how shark infested the job market waters are in terms of how a lot of recruiters go about their business. I know not all conduct their affairs in this often devious manner but it does make you wary of their often misleading tactics to attain leads & £. Whatever happened to applying for positions directly through a companies HR dept? Old School style!

Anyhoo.. Here I am, officially on the contracting bandwagon and hoping to form some solid long-term relationships with the honest and reliable head-hunters/recruiters out there.

Have a great day folks..

[sal]

Welcome to the CUK Forums.

Sorry to burst your bubble but it's not a good time, the market is s**t, HMRC are after us, it's getting harder and harder to secure a good contract.

Grats on finishing your first contract. Often the second one is harder to secure than the first one. Getting one from Linkedin connection is rather rare (depending on your skill set). Good luck nevertheless with the next one.

You are only scratching the surface of what the Agencies driven market looks like, strap on. The ever increasing regulations around disguised employment drive most Clients to use Agencies as insulation between them and the contractors. So 90%+ (don't quote me on that) of the contracts are through agencies.

Solid long lasting relationships with Agents are rare and even rarely lead to contracts. They are usually with small agencies, so the chances of them having a Client looking for your skill set at the same time as you are looking for contract are slim. Better get used to deal with the nasty bread of agency drones that are unfortunately handling the majority of the contracts.

[IL Cattivo]

Welcome to the CUK Forums.

Sorry to burst your bubble but it's not a good time, the market is s**t, HMRC are after us, it's getting harder and harder to secure a good contract.

Grats on finishing your first contract. Often the second one is harder to secure than the first one. Getting one from Linkedin connection is rather rare (depending on your skill set). Good luck nevertheless with the next one.

You are only scratching the surface of what the Agencies driven market looks like, strap on. The ever increasing regulations around disguised employment drive most Clients to use Agencies as insulation between them and the contractors. So 90%+ (don't quote me on that) of the contracts are through agencies.

Solid long lasting relationships with Agents are rare and even rarely lead to contracts. They are usually with small agencies, so the chances of them having a Client looking for your skill set at the same time as you are looking for contract are slim. Better get used to deal with the nasty bread of agency drones that are unfortunately handling the majority of the contracts.

Thanks for the honest response sal.

I had done quite a bit of research into contracting, right back earlier in the year when there were those early signs of a possibility of redundancy on the horizon. Read many a peoples experiences on here and other places on how frustrating it can be and has become, especially for those new to the arena like myself.

Still, I'm prepared to at least give it a ago for as long as I can. Already well attuned to the bottom feeding types of recruiters and have kicked a few into touch for attempting to pry deeper than they should be at the early stages of comms. I few of the recruiters I've dealt with recently I hold in the same esteem as Estate Agents.. Enough said there.

We just have to ride out these storms. Perseverance will pay dividends eventually. (no pun intended)