A little advice please..

[JamieMoles]

Currently out of work, having been permie for the last year or so.

Did some contracting and sole trader work back in 2003/2004/2005 and seriously considering going back to it.

My skillset is Infrastructure Support - Windows servers, Cisco Routers/Switches/Firewalls etc. Although for the last year the mainstay of my work has been reviewing new clients IT Infrastructure and bringing it up to date. Typically ripping out old out of warranty servers and rebuilding, replacing Small Business Servers where they no longer meet company growth and replacing with new AD and seperate server roles, replacing unmanaged switches with managed and badly specced ADSL setups with SDSL or leased lines and configuring the routers and firewalls to manage.

What I would like to know, from those of you who have been doing this for a while is two things.

Firstly, can you recommend any agencies who deal with this kind of work and are not the kind of horror stories I see posted about so many time on this forum!

Secondly, what kind of rate should I be punting myself at for this kind of work?

I'm based in Reading and can commute (by train - don't drive) to London easy enough.

Thanks in advance for any advice offered!

[JamieMoles]

Anybody?

[The Lone Gunman]

Anybody?

Hi Jamie. It may be that nobody has the experience you seek. You may well have a niche market.

All I can suggest is the usual.
Trawl the web sites for contracts that will suit you.
Post your "CV" on a couple of jobsites. The agents will find you (as well as a few cowboys on fishing trips).
You will get an idea of rate from these too.
Try contacting old clients to see if they need any more work doing.

Dont be too put off by the horror stories. There are lots of contractors out there doing fine, the few horror stories you read are not typical. Just be aware of the problems and build strategies to avoid them.


I am not in a feisty mood today, otherwise I would tell you to get off your arse and do your own research instead of bothering me. If you are not independant enough to find these things for yourself then you may not be fit to be a contractor.

[JamieMoles]

I am not in a feisty mood today, otherwise I would tell you to get off your arse and do your own research instead of bothering me. If you are not independant enough to find these things for yourself then you may not be fit to be a contractor.

Heheheh, thanks for the remarks. I have of course been doing as you say, but guess I just was looking for a little input from those in the front lines.

Thanks.

[lukemg]

Jamie,
Support in the areas you describe is pretty much dead for a number of reasons:
- Everyone that can has outsourced this annoying area to specialists.
- The low price of hardware and ease with which the skills in this area can be acquired mean it is commodity work and the price has dropped accordingly.
- Network speeds have removed many of the geographic boundaries.
In short, you will need to find something more specialised to sell. I would consider doing some ITIL certs, Project Mgmt maybe, depending on your own personal characteristics.
Failing that, any half decent permie job with a company of a reasonable size may insulate you from the storm that is coming and they may take the decision to assist in your development.
You might bounce lucky on the contract side but fear you may be left picking up bits and pieces.
Good luck.

[dmini]

Hays IT run a few large Reading clients - Im there at the moment - on a Windows support contract. Both Central gov't and a large US computer co - IB???
Yes there are a few issues around them, but - if they get the contracts...
I think what you may need to do is write two cvs - one emphasising the Wintel stuff, and one the network stuff. May be that people are looking - and think you don't have enough experience in their field.
When I retired from IT full time a bit back for a few years I had two. One had every job - but played down the high level of my IT jobs and emphasised support / helpdesky bits (as I was going for low grade temp roles). The other had the IT roles on it, empasising the higher level aspects - and any of the other jobs that had a significant amount of IT in them I could use.
Just my thought

[max]

Firstly, can you recommend any agencies who deal with this kind of work and are not the kind of horror stories I see posted about so many time on this forum!

Thanks in advance for any advice offered!

Never seen any horror stories...agents are here for the same reasons we are ...to make some crust.

My advice...1. Always respect all agents and what they do...and 2. Never believe anything they say or do.

Once you have sorted in your mind...you'll get on just fine! And you'll all make some wedge!