Which is the best site to find contract work in UK

[cojak]

LinkedIn

Although you will be up against some desperate contractors on there, but it does show how bad the market is at the moment:

Good grief, SC cleared and still needing to beg - that's bloody awful.

(Although I'd rewrite the 'two decades of experience in "devops"' bit.)

I hope he found something.

[SussexSeagull]

To answer the original question, Jobserve is probably still the best but to be honest all my contracts in the last few years have been through contacts and agents getting hold of me.

The days when you just kept on applying for contracts on Jobserve until you got one are long gone.

[DaniX]

Interesting, what is the reason for such a downturn in contracting - is it just that the UK economy is not doing very well?

When contracting I was on 625 quid per day out of IR35, as a permanent employee I make 65K per year doing the same job. Essentially my after tax income as a contractor, after paying for pension and a medical insurance was twice what I currently make. So even if I can only get 6 months of contract work per year I'll make as much and have a lot of free time to travel.

[hobnob]

So even if I can only get 6 months of contract work per year I'll make as much and have a lot of free time to travel.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

I read an analogy recently (probably here, but I can't find the post now). Suppose that a cruise ship dropped you off on a desert island and said "We'll be back in a month to pick you up, and here's 2 months of food, drink, etc. just in case we're delayed." In that scenario, you could just laze around all day, and you wouldn't need to worry unless the ship was late to pick you up. On the other hand, suppose that you were shipwrecked with 2 months of supplies, and you didn't know how long it would be (if ever) until you were rescued. In that case, you'd probably want to eke out your rations to last you as long as possible, rather than eating normally.

In the context of contracting, the ideal scenario is that you could take a couple of months off to go travelling, then just mark yourself as "open to work" when you get home, and start a new contract the following week. However, if you know that you could be on the bench for weeks/months, do you really want to be jetting off on holiday?

Coming back to your original question, I've got my CV on about 8 different websites (although I haven't updated it recently). Whenever I got a call from an agent, I'd ask them where they saw my CV, in the hope that I could reduce that number. E.g. if most people said that they used JobServe and nobody mentioned Reed, there's no point keeping my Reed CV up to date. However, most agents said "I don't know, I just got it from our database".

I get messages via Indeed and LinkedIn, so in those cases I know where they saw me. However, a lot of those messages don't have anything to do with my skillset, and even when they are relevant I don't know whether they'd actually lead to a new role.

[dsc]

Interesting, what is the reason for such a downturn in contracting - is it just that the UK economy is not doing very well?

When contracting I was on 625 quid per day out of IR35, as a permanent employee I make 65K per year doing the same job. Essentially my after tax income as a contractor, after paying for pension and a medical insurance was twice what I currently make. So even if I can only get 6 months of contract work per year I'll make as much and have a lot of free time to travel.

Yeah in a calculation that might work, reality however quickly adjusts things, currently you have people benched for 12m+ with depleted warchests. Planning like in your example was fine before Covid, now is a different world and you can be easily cut from a contract early with absolutely nothing to go back to. Also outside contracts are scarce, most people accepted that fact a long time ago.

[Fraidycat]

Interesting, what is the reason for such a downturn in contracting - is it just that the UK economy is not doing very well?

Yeah UK GBP grow has been flat for the last 18 months.

Plus companies belt tightening because they have to pay more debt interest. So many new projects on hold.

But those projects will still need doing, and we will be in high demand again at some point.

All those projects will get the green light at the same time..

We will go from few companies hiring to everyone wanting to hire at the same time..

[dx4100]

Yeah UK GBP grow has been flat for the last 18 months.

Plus companies belt tightening because they have to pay more debt interest. So many new projects on hold.

But those projects will still need doing, and we will be in high demand again at some point.

All those projects will get the green light at the same time..

We will go from few companies hiring to everyone wanting to hire at the same time..

This is the reality. You just have to ride out the storm.

[Sub]

Yeah UK GBP grow has been flat for the last 18 months.

Plus companies belt tightening because they have to pay more debt interest. So many new projects on hold.

But those projects will still need doing, and we will be in high demand again at some point.

All those projects will get the green light at the same time..

We will go from few companies hiring to everyone wanting to hire at the same time..

That seems to best case scenario, even it is not clear, when such return going to happen. But we not seeing the bottom yet, unfortunately.

The period of higher interest rates started around last October gradually getting painful for credit holders around April this year. This means many businesses and individuals still enjoying lower rates on their existing contracts (mortgages, business / personal loans, even credit cards). This will be getting worse during 2024 as more of those contracts will have to be refinanced on higher rates, meaning higher costs, less sales and even less desire to run new projects. So, there is no real prospect of reaching bottom until end of 2024, considering that there is some drag to the process, probably beginning of 2025.

We already see raise in delinquencies, reduction of house prices and staff reductions and this will only accelerate over the course on next months. To me it seems that for contractors with less than 18 months of warchest, weathering out the storm not going to work - it is time to work on plan B.

[Fraidycat]

There is going to pressure on the central banks to cut rates before the UK and US elections next year.

So the stock markets are hoping for a rate cut in the first half of next year, maybe even in the first quarter.

April 2024 could be the start of a new contractor bull market..

[agentzero]

The current prediction is that rates will remain "high", whatever that is, until late 2024 at the earliest. The commercial property market is going through a shock now. I'm ignoring the general positive US sentiment, they have a lot of economic problems too.

If contractors are struggling now, LinkedIn seems to be where jobs are getting sent by messaging on LinkedIn. Pre covid, jobserve was king. Now, it's definitely sporadic and you being known by name by agencies.