Boring/Not much work to do in current contract

[lukemg]

Some good advice on here (Tom should be writing the first-timer guides !).
Defo think about training, some of the PM/agile stuff + experience might change the picture.
Don't rule out learning stuff on contract, be the guy who can help out, tap up any of the senior guys who you think have skills, offer some help on the quiet.
I have been to a few perm bosses to say I am underused and happy to help out in any areas, even stuff I wasn't hired for. This has rarely resulted in tons of work and has NEVER resulted in a contract ending, I think they like the helpful attitude ! Also, once I have asked for extra work, I feel no qualms about working basic hours...
Chap I am working fornow has NEVER had a perm job, scored contract straight from Uni and upskilled as he went along (need a lot of personal skills to do that).
Also - don't presume perm jobs come with massive training opps, many I have seen are grudging at best about upskilling.

[MrMarkyMark]

I have been to a few perm bosses to say I am underused and happy to help out in any areas, even stuff I wasn't hired for. This has rarely resulted in tons of work and has NEVER resulted in a contract ending, I think they like the helpful attitude !

Careful here, this certainly would not look good from an IR35 perspective.

[LondonManc]

Careful here, this certainly would not look good from an IR35 perspective.

Yep, but iirc you're fine if you ask for it but not if they ask you to do it.

[zeus91]

Don't rule out learning stuff on contract, be the guy who can help out, tap up any of the senior guys who you think have skills, offer some help on the quiet...
Chap I am working fornow has NEVER had a perm job, scored contract straight from Uni and upskilled as he went along (need a lot of personal skills to do that).
Also - don't presume perm jobs come with massive training opps, many I have seen are grudging at best about upskilling.

Firstly thanks for the responses so far, I'm having difficulties logging on via my phone hence lack of responses from myself.

I'm currently reading through the ISEB Business Analysis book and planning to submit myself for the foundation exam before Christmas, my contract is until February (hopefully should be here until end of Jan worse case scenario as that's when the new budget is likely to be finalised). Will be planning to get the Prince 2 foundation by January, so if I do find myself on the market in the new year I'll be in a more competitive position.

A big hurdle i'm likely to face is in the new year, there will be a lot of cost cutting next year, some cuts have already been made, a fellow contractor I know that worked as part of a different project was cut from his contract with two months to go. So I'm not holding my breath for an extension following the new year.

As mentioned before in this case I will have just over three years experience by then as a BA (two years of which at two Tier 1 IB's in the way of two one year contracts) although this is a good amount of varied experience considering I'll only be around 3.5 years out of Uni, it will put me in the firing line to compete against the contractors with 10 plus years experience. Not sure if I'll stand much of a chance of securing a contract in this case, and whether I have just been lucky so far!

Obviously this is all speculation I won't know for sure until the new year comes and if I do find myself back in the UK, I'll just have to get my CV out there to see how the market takes me and if I can carry on as a contractor or will reluctantly have to take a permie role for a couple of years.

What I want to ask you guys is how long do you think is the 'right' amount of experience/years before someone should ideally look to start contracting specifically for a BA/PM role in a London IB. How long did you guys stay perm (if at all) before you took the leap.

Cheers

[gables]

What I want to ask you guys is how long do you think is the 'right' amount of experience/years before someone should ideally look to start contracting specifically for a BA/PM role in a London IB. How long did you guys stay perm (if at all) before you took the leap.

Cheers

Going to watch the responses to this with interest.

My starting situation was a while ago, but as you ask, I worked for 4 years in a permanent position after uni before going contracting, 9 months of that a graduate scheme in the firm. I'm not even sure there were BAs in those days :-) but I was in a technical role with very current and in demand skills gained from the permie position. From this I was able to secure very attractive contracts, build my skills and never a dull moment.

I don't reckon you need decades of permie experience, but you do need very real in depth knowledge of the area you want to go in, and maybe with BA work that takes more than 3 years. For me I just buried myself in everything I could at the permie role which gave me knowledge (and experience) that you couldn't get from books, evidenced when interviewing bootcamp MSCEs for example :-) And as it was a permie job no one was going say I shouldn't work or put myself forward.

[northernladuk]

If depends massively. You maybe taken in as a junior and need a fair few number of years to get the exposure but you might get thrown straight into a cutting edge project. I'd also say it's how hungry you are. Sitting there in a big corporate expecting your career be handed to you on a plate will also leave you behind.

[dwater]

I have just been in a similar situation. Well, I've been in it a few times, tbh, both permanent and contract.

Either way, my recommendation is to make use of the time, irrespective of if your employer or client can find you anything. Don't get bored...get busy. If they can't find you anything, then find yourself something - get that experience despite them. Getting bored might be easy, but it'll leave your existing skills stale and you'll maybe end up forgetting stuff you'll need to remember at your next interview/job, and it's really not doing due diligence to your business since you should be taking advantage of every chance to further your learning. On a contract, if you look like you're doing nothing and are getting bored, then it'll be more obvious and decide to let you go, perhaps with a view to engaging you again when they have more need.

In a recent permanent role, they were having trouble finding things for me to do - mostly due to a(nother) "change in direction" rather than any incompetence on my part. I was eventually reassigned into a team that was doing some related work, which was ok I guess, but there were quite long periods where I essentially had to keep myself busy...and it was very tempting to just do as little as possible and it wasn't fun at all. That was part of the reason for me leaving.

In a recent contract role, they essentially hired me too early and the project wasn't ready for me. I was trying to keep myself busy and productive for a several days, preparing as best I could for when the work would come, but they eventually concluded I would be sitting around for weeks and they'd best just let me go, and hope I'd still be available when the project picked up again. I learned from this experience to make sure the project is ready before accepting a contract - keeping yourself busy is really no fun at all, especially at smaller clients where the expense of me being there is more obvious.

I wonder what people here think of using such 'idle' time (hired but not required to do anything) to learn new 'in demand' skills, and then add them to your CV. Is that dishonest? What if they're actually related to the work you were hired for? Having them on the CV is surely better than self training that you might do between contracts...

[northernladuk]

I wonder what people here think of using such 'idle' time (hired but not required to do anything) to learn new 'in demand' skills, and then add them to your CV. Is that dishonest? What if they're actually related to the work you were hired for? Having them on the CV is surely better than self training that you might do between contracts...

Very much depends. Some people do this, manage to land the next gig and manage to pull it off fine. Some will get tripped up in the interview by not giving full enough answers and get found out. Others will get on site and get walked. I've seen the last two in action so it does happen.

Guess it's down to what it is you are learning, how well you learnt it and wether you are good enough to pull a bit of a blag at interview and on site. Remember you've got to do the work when you get there so you need to be fairly pragmatic.

For example (IMO) if you've played around with the clients new ServiceNow tool and feel fairly competent then nothing wrong with putting down 'Experience with ServiceNow' on your CV. Putting down 'Implemented ServiceNow' is just a waste of yours, the agents and clients time and it's just not true and you won't be able to do the work you are being hired to do.

[blackeye]

Im in two minds. With BA work, it's heavily reliant on soft skills (compared to a developer).

Some people leave university with the social skills required, that would take others a decade to obtain in a professional environment.

I've worked with BAs with 6 years experience from top consultancies (i.e. doing it "right"), and they were very average. Then I've worked BAs with a couple of years within the domain and they were excellent. The best BAs are those with 20 years of experience - but they aren't too many of them because as a role, it's quite transitionary. People move on to management roles after a while.

I think if you have good soft skills, understand your domain very well and are smart and hungry, contracting is possible after a couple of years out of university.

To make it even less black and white, there are more business focused roles and more technical. Plus various types of contracts, i.e. project V BAU.

I'd say if you can get into it and have the confidence, why not.

[VillageContractor]

Im in two minds. With BA work, it's heavily reliant on soft skills (compared to a developer).

Some people leave university with the social skills required, that would take others a decade to obtain in a professional environment.

I've worked with BAs with 6 years experience from top consultancies (i.e. doing it "right"), and they were very average. Then I've worked BAs with a couple of years within the domain and they were excellent. The best BAs are those with 20 years of experience - but they aren't too many of them because as a role, it's quite transitionary. People move on to management roles after a while.

I think if you have good soft skills, understand your domain very well and are smart and hungry, contracting is possible after a couple of years out of university.

To make it even less black and white, there are more business focused roles and more technical. Plus various types of contracts, i.e. project V BAU.

I'd say if you can get into it and have the confidence, why not.

These can tend to be some of the average of any role. Big consultancies will push under skilled staff onto clients