What's happened to the market?

[tay]

I was always going to take 2 months off from Mid December anyway.. so hopefully by mid Feb things will be ok again. Although my crystal ball is broke

Cant be worse then 2003, and I got work easily enough then.

[Joe Black]

mid Dec is not traditionally a good time to be looking. But IMO soon all this credit stuff will blow over and it will be back to business as usual. I hope.

Then again you never know.

My previous contract started on the 15th of December, offer on the Wednesday in on the Friday to get up to speed. Unfortunately couldn't take my usual few weeks off at Christmas as a result.

Current contract began on the third week in June, not a good time usually for the europeans either, as they're generally winding down, counting the days to July when all and sundry up and close shop.

[bobhope]

It doesn't feel like 2 minutes since we were in the previous down-turn. It's been 4 years (ca. end 2003), I know.

I hope everybody has a safe harbour to stay in.

[LGDT]

.NET market seems OK up here in the wilds of the Midlands.

Cranked out my CV to my agency mailing list a week last Monday offering my services from 5th November. By last Friday I'd secured a 4 monther, closer to home and paying more.

3 further interview offers since accepting that one.

My advice is don't think Jobserve is the be all and end all or believe everything that clown McLaughlin writes on his website.

[max]

My advice is don't think Jobserve is the be all and end all or believe everything that clown McLaughlin writes on his website.

Absolutley! One of the most important tips for contractors..some of the stuff he spouts his truly rapid.

[b0redom]

My last contract finished about two weeks ago today, and the only reason I didn't start this one immediately was that I wanted a week off. I just had to delist my CV as I was getting so many calls from agents, and they're still coming.

Seems fine around London with infrastructure stuff... Are you guys looking for work paying £1000/day or something?

[rootsnall]

What a depressing thread for someone who has a contract ending in mid December!

I'm mid December. You just need the right mindset, my thinking is a month of xmas festivities and then a couple of weeks somewhere warm and then start looking in Feb.

[floatsy]

you'd think these people might see something like this coming...

nods, where was the common sense, and what does that say about how we do business.

[boxman]

I've been looking at about £400 a day but having numerous .NET projects back to 2001 under my belt and loads of client-facing experience just seems to be pricing me out of the market.

I had a heated discussion with an agent at the end of last week you said "Listen mate you're too expensive". What he actually meant was he didn't have any jobs that weren't just code monkey roles. As I've got a dozen years in finance on the business side, 10 years in IT contracting and led a team until last month I'm clearly looking for roles that are more senior and therefore don't come up so frequently. In general the S3 agencies tend not to have these roles in my experience but posting my CV online with numerous job boards has led to a large number of unsolicited calls which on the whole have been better quality and I suspect are far less widely advertised giving me the best chance of success in the selection/interview process.

Having spent the past 7 weeks on the bench I've decided to re-focus my efforts to leverage my business experience and opted to take a Prince2 course the week after next which if I can pass with give me a Practitioner qualification. I'll then start looking for technical PM or similar roles which tend to pay good rates consistently. Clearly having a Prince2 qualification won't mean anything until a few projects under my belt but I can price my company's services accordingly in the short term to secure work and thus gain the experience on my CV that should (hopefully) allow me secure work at higher rates thereafter.

That's the plan anyway

[DesignPunk]

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, thinking of browsing for some junior .NET contracts next year, I've got alot of design experience and had my head in books studying .NET, plus a few personal projects. My bread and butter is training which I do daily but any advice on .NET contracting is always well received!