Getting a job after about ten years off, remotely!

[dude69]

Are you expecting to find a well paid contract where the client also pays for training you? OK

No, I clearly said I'm not expecting a well paid contract. I don't expect for them to 'pay for training for me'.

[northernladuk]

No, I clearly said I'm not expecting a well paid contract. I don't expect for them to 'pay for training for me'.

To be fair you've been out of the game for 10 years so if you do blag your way in you'll be learning on their time so not too dissimilar

[dsc]

I don't want to sound negative, but you'd be lucky getting a perm entry job, let alone a contract gig and this is in pretty much any industry.

I do have to ask however, those 10 years ago what sort of work was it and for how long?

[Fraidycat]

You need to first update your skills so that you familiar with the latest tech stack.

You also need to consider the new technologies that have come into use over the last 12 years, like GIT, and CI/CD tools, and new build tools.

These are complex and confusing techologies, getting used to GIT can take a few months.

Regarding your 12 year gap:
You could remove all start and end dates from your CV.

List previous roles as:

2 years working at client X...
1 year working at client Y..

Sometimes clients and agents don't notice or care about specific dates. Especially if not a sensitive role where work history is important and might need to be checked, you should avoid applying to those kinds of role anyway.

If asked 'what have you been working on recently' reply 'in my last role i did...'

[dude69]

I don't want to sound negative, but you'd be lucky getting a perm entry job, let alone a contract gig and this is in pretty much any industry.

I do have to ask however, those 10 years ago what sort of work was it and for how long?

I used to work in banking, back office apps, .net windows forms, asp.net, sql. For about 10 years.

[Zigenare]

10 years off? Can't your probation officer help you?

[mattster]

Not much to add to what has already been written, but just to note that I returned to (inside) contracting last year after just over ten years out of the "workforce", during which time I wrote and sold my own software online. OK, so I was keeping busy (and probably doing more actual coding that I've ever done in a commercial environment), but they only had my word to go on for that. I had a fairly strong (London financial) CV before doing my own thing, and the market was strong when I was applying. Even so, I'm sure I was often overlooked because of the "gap", but once through the agent firewall many of the actual nerds doing the hiring found it quite interesting. In fact I was asked to present a demo of my own software to one place, who were very curious and did offer (although I didn't take it). You have the added complication of being out of the country, which could well be a deal breaker especially as the market is, apparently, not as strong as it was - you really can't have anything working against you in that case. Whatever happens, if you do get through to an interview it probably won't be many, so you'll need to nail them. A few of the places I looked at were using Hackerrank online testing, and they do a good program of practice tests to help you get up to speed (as ever with tests, it is as much about learning how to take the tests as the knowledge itself).