Contracts in the City seem to be few and far between at the moment

[Euro-commuter]

I was going to post this as a separate thread, I'm an experienced C# developer - plenty of roles outside the City in London, which is fine at the mo, but obviously rates are higher in the city, getting these contracts seems to be a Catch 22 situation regarding financial experience; experience is required (derivatives for example) - but how do you get that experience in the first place?!

If it were easy to get, it wouldn't pay more. Sorry.

[dotnetter]

The week before last I had 2 interviews and 2 offers after being back from holiday for 2 days

Both in the city, one for a large bank using VB6 (yes VB6 ) and I have no previous banking experience, and one for a smaller company using .Net C#, SQL 2005 etc

I found the market to be slower than usual but still lots about.

The funny thing was both offers came from the same agency (which i didnt realise at the time), I accepted the smaller firm because it was more interesting and wasnt using legacy technology, then the bank upped their offer another £75 a day , So I did a U-Turn and accepted their offer.

tulip hit the fan at the agency because I was under offer from one consultant and another one came in and tried to steal me. So the directors made the second one withdraw the offer so in the end it worked out ok (except I was on a lower rate which I'm not to fussed about)

[yellow]

If it were easy to get, it wouldn't pay more. Sorry.

Absolutely Euro-commuter, that wasn't the question though and why are you apologising?

The question was "How do you get that experience in the first place?"

Maybe an answer might of been for example (I'm just making these up)

- Previous experience in the financial sector in another (possibly non-IT) role before becoming a developer.
- Getting yer foot in the door is what not what you know, but who you know.
- Taking a pay cut outside of the City and trying to get any gig elsewhere which would provide relevant experience.
- Relevant qualifications that could marry a computer science and finance skills.

[Xenophon]

Absolutely Euro-commuter, that wasn't the question though and why are you apologising?

The question was "How do you get that experience in the first place?"

Maybe an answer might of been for example (I'm just making these up)

- Previous experience in the financial sector in another (possibly non-IT) role before becoming a developer.
- Getting yer foot in the door is what not what you know, but who you know.
- Taking a pay cut outside of the City and trying to get any gig elsewhere which would provide relevant experience.
- Relevant qualifications that could marry a computer science and finance skills.

You appear to have answered your own question quite well, yellow.

The 'General' forum is the busiest, but not the best place for serious replies (see my earlier post in this thread...).

[Ruprect]

Absolutely Euro-commuter, that wasn't the question though and why are you apologising?

The question was "How do you get that experience in the first place?"

Maybe an answer might of been for example (I'm just making these up)

- Previous experience in the financial sector in another (possibly non-IT) role before becoming a developer.
- Getting yer foot in the door is what not what you know, but who you know.
- Taking a pay cut outside of the City and trying to get any gig elsewhere which would provide relevant experience.
- Relevant qualifications that could marry a computer science and finance skills.

As Xenophon said, you have answered your own question quite well, a question which has been asked and answered countless times on these forums already. you forgot "get a perm position in the industry for a couple of years and then go contracting" tho.

[alreadypacked]

[QUOTE=yellow]I was going to post this as a separate thread

Sorry yellow, suffering for a bit of demob fever at the moment