Most common role you are approached for.

[sadkingbilly]

Vauxhall?

[quackhandle]

That's Nigel Frank - hassle contractors and partners / end users until they give in.

Avoid like the plague, complete bulltulipters.

qh

[PerfectStorm]

Oddly I always get contacted by Ford. I live in the wrong part of London to bother with them.

Oh yes Ford. “Client wants you in Dagenham X days a week, still interested? Hello?”

Sky TV is another. Mmm, weekday mornings on the M4, no thank you.

[TheDude]

Sky in Osterley an Standard Chartered are two others.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I'm usually approached for roles that have absolutely no bearing on my actual skillset

Me too - I am between contracts at present so I have engaged in a little agent baiting - asking them what it was on my Linkedin that suggested I'd be suitable. It amuses me a little even though I know it's pointless and childish.

Also getting approached for a lot of purple unicorn roles which have been written to combine the work of ten people and they seem genuinely surprised I am not interested.

In my niche BP at Sunbury is the always advertised role which must have monster churn - crap place to get to and really poor rates.

Selfridges lost a lot of good contractors (me included) with their blanket PSC ban.

[SueEllen]

Oh yes Ford. “Client wants you in Dagenham X days a week, still interested? Hello?”

I've passed by that part of the M25 when it wasn't "busy".

[Eirikur]

Avoid like the plague, complete bulltulipters.

qh

Love their LinkdIn profiles previous job: trolley pusher at Tesco (or bouncer at a pub), current job sales manager at Mason Frank
Education 5 GSCEs

[SussexSeagull]

Sky in Osterley an Standard Chartered are two others.

Funnily enough Sky are advertising for testers at the moment.

[edison]

Not my experience. Although having worked there I don't get a single call. And in my experience most of the contractors are there forever. Proper sweet target for HMRC. I thought they'd be next after GSK for the letters.

Who is approaching you? Their internal people or an agent on their PSL?

I've had a mixture - headhunters, internal 'talent acquisition' people, agencies.

To be clear, the roles were in a specific niche so may have not been representative of all of their IT department and hiring.

Last time I heard about a role there was pre-Covid I think.

[rocktronAMP]

Funnily enough Sky are advertising for testers at the moment.

Sky in Osterley over the years.
I always knocked it back because of the b***ache of travel. Trains are a nightmare, I preferred the fast Virgin Train to Euston and then jump around on the London Underground to Victoria or Liverpool Street station (You know Zone 1 only clients). Therefore I refused to drive M1/M40 daily. I also hear that it is a missmanagement of developers / qa / testers since the pandemic, because of hybrid / fully remote in fighting ...

The other place is Tescos in Welwyn Garden City ... "We're Digital. We're Agile." They are nothing special IMHO compared to Sainsbury's Digital etc. Terrible interview process (2016/2017). J.f.C!