Moving to London area from the EU - best way to finc contract

[istvan]

Hi, I could not find anything much relating to this topic, so I am starting a new thread. Please point me to existing posts if I am beating a dead horse.

I am an EU citizen living in Central Eastern Europe with over 15 years of project management experience, with grad degrees, Prince2 Practitioner certificate, etc. Most of my experience comes from the USA, as I worked there for two decades. I work in Payroll/Finance BPO recently, but spent over 10 years in IT/Telecom.

What would you suggest, what should be my strategy to serch for contracts in London area. So far I used JobServe and CWJobs, but no matter how many positions I apply for it does not seem to even get a a recruiter. If a recruiter has seen my CV it would show on JobServe's stats.

Also, I do not know what is a reasonable daily rate. I suppose looking at itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts is a good souce to determin the going rates. I figure it shuld be around 450 a day. Let me know if I am overpricing myself or am I just becoming a Bob.

Anyway, I would appreciate any advise from you.

[istvan]

OK, "finc" should spell "find" in thread

[radish2008]

Hi, I could not find anything much relating to this topic, so I am starting a new thread. Please point me to existing posts if I am beating a dead horse.

I am an EU citizen living in Central Eastern Europe with over 15 years of project management experience, with grad degrees, Prince2 Practitioner certificate, etc. Most of my experience comes from the USA, as I worked there for two decades. I work in Payroll/Finance BPO recently, but spent over 10 years in IT/Telecom.

What would you suggest, what should be my strategy to serch for contracts in London area. So far I used JobServe and CWJobs, but no matter how many positions I apply for it does not seem to even get a a recruiter. If a recruiter has seen my CV it would show on JobServe's stats.

Also, I do not know what is a reasonable daily rate. I suppose looking at itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts is a good souce to determin the going rates. I figure it shuld be around 450 a day. Let me know if I am overpricing myself or am I just becoming a Bob.

Anyway, I would appreciate any advise from you.

Hey Istvan, we share the same name (if you are Hungarian ! - I lived in Budapest for a year about 20 years ago)

I've been contracting for 3 years and have spent the last year in London, to be honest I very rarely get replies (if that's what you meant by 'getting a recruiter') from applications via job boards so I wouldn't stress too much about it. Generally I take lots of calls and go from there.

As for your rate it seems ok - I was doing a technical role on the same rate but for a bank - the PMs there were on around £650 so maybe aim a bit higher ?

Good luck

Steve

[SueEllen]

Istvan you may have problems if you aren't in the country, let alone in the London area, recruiters (or pimps as they are often called on here) are in general incredibly stupid people.

Most of them don't understand the roles they are recruiting for plus don't realise with modern transport and communication methods that people can interview quickly.

[radish2008]

This is also a good thread ...

on the same subject

http://forums.contractoruk.com/busin...st-agents.html


Steve

[istvan]

Thanks SueElen, I guess I will have to spend some time in London and prearrange some meetings with recruiters (incredible stupid pimps I guess – I had a good laugh about this) or hopefully with potential clients. Likewise thanks Radish2008 for the link, good info to contact the right agencies.

Steve, yes we share the same name. My friends in the US call me Steve, but in Hungary I use my name in local language. Originally I am from Slovakia, but at a fairly young age I immigrated to the States, well escaped from the commies. After living 22 years in the Chicago area, I decided to move to Hungary. Nine years in Hungary is just too much. I am getting the itch to move on. My daughter attends college in London, so it makes sense for me to be in London as well. Besides I like London much more than Budapest.

Steve, what do you mean by “Generally I take lots of calls and go from there”? Do you call agents?

[radish2008]

Steve, what do you mean by “Generally I take lots of calls and go from there”? Do you call agents?

I loved Budapest - was there 90-91. Good times.

By taking a lot of calls I meant I get lots of calls from agencies (peaking at around 20 a day). These fall into different categories such as speculative calls like "Hi Steve, just wondered what your current situation is ..." to calls about specific jobs. The ones that get further are generally the ones that are single agency i.e. an egency that works directly and exclusively for the client. These seem to be rarer but are better than multi agency where there may be 4 people from 5 different agancies being put forward. To be honest it's a bit of a lottery and there is a lot of luck involved I think. The thing that dismays me abut this model is that getting your CV in front of the client might be very hard due to the agency's lack of understanding of the role and your CV not immediately ticking all boxes. This can be circumvented by tailoring your CV but, for example, I was working in Canary Wharf in London and would really love to get back there. 12 years development experience in C#, Sql Server, C++ etc etc and I was applying for roles in IBs. I can't even get a reply due to lack of previous experience and most dev jobs in IBs demand previous exposure.

A guy I worked with once told me that recruitement consultants only find people for jobs, not jobs for people.

Steve

[SueEllen]

Steve, what do you mean by “Generally I take lots of calls and go from there”? Do you call agents?

As most people on here act the same way if they haven't got direct contacts I thought I would answer -
1. You put your CV on as many job boards that are relevant to your skills, and
2. You apply to as many advertised roles that are relevant to your skills.

You then get phone calls from agents.

A lot of them will be fishing calls asking about who you worked for as they are trying to get people into the last company you worked for. This can be another illustration of some agents stupidity as they will presume if you don't put locations on your CV (which there is no point in doing) all your roles were in the UK or that your entire team weren't contractors.

Others will try and ask you for references as a condition of putting you forward. If the agent is genuine they will be happy to only get these references after you have secured the role. See this thread for more details.

A few of them will be real roles.