I'm a SQL Developer contractor with 20 years experience, and my last contract ended 6 months ago.
Since then I've been working full-time on a plan-B that has so far been working out well, generating a reasonable income that -should- allow me to become financially independent and give up contracting.
While I believe it will continue to be successful, I'm starting to get concerned that should it ultimately fail (which it might), then I would need to get back into the contract market. The longer you are out of the market the more stale your skills become and the harder it will be to get your next contract.
So my question is - is there anything I can do to keep my IT skills current such that if, say, in two years time I need to get a contract, clients will still considering hiring me?
The obvious answer to this is that I could try and get a part-time contract of, say, 3 days a week. This would allow me to keep on doing the plan-B the other two days a week (which works). I could do a 5-day a week contract of course, but it would mean I'd need to suspend work on the plan-B.
So over the past four weeks I've been applying for roles on Jobserve and linkedin.
The problem is none of the advertised roles for my skill-set are for part time. They don't say what they are, and when I speak to agents after submitting my CV, they say that they are 5 days/week. Which to be fair is the assumption I have always had when applying for these types of roles in the past.
I've applied for around 15 roles so far, but only two of the clients have said they would in principle be happy to take someone on on a part time basis, and a couple of the agents said they had never heard of a part time contract.
Just wondering whether anyone else has tried to apply for part time roles, and whether they encountered the same issues?
Maybe I should be more proactive, and contact contractors and agents I have worked for in the past to see if they have any work. The trouble is I'm not much of a social person and haven't done very much networking/keeping in contact with people.
I could try and contact client companies directly perhaps.
Go to SQL events and talk to people who might know of someone who is hiring.
Comment on LinkedIn technical chat pages
Thing is I could do all these proactive steps - but if the time and effort put into it is significant, then I might end up as much time on it as I would have had I just gone for a 5-day a week contract.
Thanks
Since then I've been working full-time on a plan-B that has so far been working out well, generating a reasonable income that -should- allow me to become financially independent and give up contracting.
While I believe it will continue to be successful, I'm starting to get concerned that should it ultimately fail (which it might), then I would need to get back into the contract market. The longer you are out of the market the more stale your skills become and the harder it will be to get your next contract.
So my question is - is there anything I can do to keep my IT skills current such that if, say, in two years time I need to get a contract, clients will still considering hiring me?
The obvious answer to this is that I could try and get a part-time contract of, say, 3 days a week. This would allow me to keep on doing the plan-B the other two days a week (which works). I could do a 5-day a week contract of course, but it would mean I'd need to suspend work on the plan-B.
So over the past four weeks I've been applying for roles on Jobserve and linkedin.
The problem is none of the advertised roles for my skill-set are for part time. They don't say what they are, and when I speak to agents after submitting my CV, they say that they are 5 days/week. Which to be fair is the assumption I have always had when applying for these types of roles in the past.
I've applied for around 15 roles so far, but only two of the clients have said they would in principle be happy to take someone on on a part time basis, and a couple of the agents said they had never heard of a part time contract.
Just wondering whether anyone else has tried to apply for part time roles, and whether they encountered the same issues?
Maybe I should be more proactive, and contact contractors and agents I have worked for in the past to see if they have any work. The trouble is I'm not much of a social person and haven't done very much networking/keeping in contact with people.
I could try and contact client companies directly perhaps.
Go to SQL events and talk to people who might know of someone who is hiring.
Comment on LinkedIn technical chat pages
Thing is I could do all these proactive steps - but if the time and effort put into it is significant, then I might end up as much time on it as I would have had I just gone for a 5-day a week contract.
Thanks
Comment