Finding new contracts on the open market

[craig1]

That concurs with my experience too.

I often get calls when I upload to Jobsite but not from Jobserve. I have asked agent's and they confirm Jobserve's CV search is not as good as Jobsite's.

Since I've done my fiddling with my profile on Monster I get more calls from there than anywhere else for both agency and direct client work. There's something in the Monster search algorithm that seems to place a massive premium on the location of your last place of work, I have mine set for a random central London one these days and it helps. Everywhere else I say I want to work just doesn't seem to register on searches by agencies and clients through Monster.

[Dominic Connor]

It's your CV

You've done the right thing getting peer review for your CV, but I still find myself writing that you should change it.

As an IT contractor, the thing that gets you interviews is your CV and for whatever reason it isn't and given this is the only variable you can change. The market is beyond your control, so largely it being "good" or "bad" doesn't change what you should do.

I would advise producing more different (but true) versions of your CV, one may stick.

I suspect one bug may be buzzwords, either you don't have enough or that yours have become less fashionable. It may be that you need to self study to get them or to at least use modern terms for terms that have become outmoded.

Conversely you may have too many buzzwords, often clients and recruiters want "a bloke wot does SQL Sever 2008" and everything that isn't MSSQL dilutes your impact. One set of CVs should be to present you as a pure-X where X is each of the things you are good at.

I'd also advise you throwing your CV away.
Start making a list of every damned thing you can do together with how good you are at it. Then look at job ads to see how you can make a case from this lst for doing each of these jobs.

One side effect should be that you spot gaps that you can fill in, ie "I'm everything they want except...".

Treating your CV as buggy code is the way forward, this block of code doesn't return the right results, why ?
You've got deep experience in this style of thinking, use it.

It may be that you're hitting ageism or "over qualification", so it may be time to compress away experience from before this century.
...or it may not, as I say multiple versions, some longer, some shorter will help.