2024 Contracting Return!!

[TheDude]

IR35 has changed contracting at banks forever.

Jokes about every day being bonus day and casually mentioning your share in a light aircraft are a thing of the past.

[Lotok]

Just beware of the HMRC tulip you need to wade through. Its not just IR35 now, they are also accusing accountants of being MSCPs in order to brand the clients MSCs. Don't use an accountant if they provide access to a bespoke portal or charge a monthly fee for a service.

For contracts, until I recently went perm I used CWJobs and LinkedIn mostly

[PerfectStorm]

Cold approaches on LinkedIn sound about the worst way to do any of this...

[PCTNN]

Using the search functionality on LinkedIn is not the way to find roles (at least for my line of work). Only old duffers would think to use it.

Recruitment agents don't post jobs on linkedIn, they just post about the role and signpost it to their agency's website. And normally every recruiter at the same agency share and re-post each other's posts.

So forget about the search functionality. All you need to do is connect with agents working for the agencies that you know from experience recruit for contracts in your field (I know for me there are 3-4 agencies I know are in the supplier list for public sector gigs...another agency I know does the contracts for 2 major banks...and so on) and you'll find contracts just by scrolling through your feed.

[ladymuck]

I get quite a lot of approaches via LinkedIn, and most of my contracts are through the platform

[Hairlocks]

I agree with the other replies. Jobserve for looking and applying. Get your own profile upto date on linkedin in though. Last gig found me on linkedin, I find more agents discover me looking on linkedin than on jobserve these days.

[fiisch]

Get yourself up to speed with the current IR35 legislation. You might be in for a shock to find nearly all banking/finance roles are inside IR35 so it isn't back to contracting as you knew it. You'll likely be employed by an umbrella so technically you'll be leaving perm to get back to being employed life.

Insurance however (which is reasonably transferrable from banking), is mostly outside. Fortunately those risk adverse souls are happy to take a risk when it comes to IR35, it seems.

[ajw19]

I was looking for the past few weeks, I was using both JobServe and LinkedIn and was successful in the end with JobServe.

I'm not a huge fan of using LinkedIn for contracts, as mentioned above - the search functionality is poor and don't get me started on the actual typical content in my feed. There also seems to be far more obviously fake ads than I remember there being in the past.

[sreed]

I'm a generalist tech PM - PSR and Reed have been good for me. The couple of recruiters that contacted me and discussed a relevant role after picking up my CV, they all came through Reed.

I found it terribly hard to search effectively on LinkedIn, though it was really easy to apply for roles once I'd identified a suitable one.

[SussexSeagull]

Most of my contracts come through my network now. I tend to find Jobserve a bit of a lottery but I can imagine specialists might have a bit more luck out of it.

[gables]

Jobserve and Linkedin. There are other smaller sites like PRS Public sector and Outside IR35 pages but I found this completely useless in the couple of weeks I was looking.

I can't remember seeing anything that was on linkedin but not on jobserve so I ended up really just focussing on jobserve which did what it does and got me in gig yet again. I hear noise about jobserve being less relevant but it's nailed it every single time for me in the last 15 years so still the go to place for me.

Agree with Jobserve, LinkedIn less so but that's down to me really. Would also add personal contacts, as secured this current role by that route and in this case it's a contact initially made over 20 years ago which I'm quite pleased about

[northernladuk]

Get yourself up to speed with the current IR35 legislation. You might be in for a shock to find nearly all banking/finance roles are inside IR35 so it isn't back to contracting as you knew it. You'll likely be employed by an umbrella so technically you'll be leaving perm to get back to being employed life.

[SneakySimon]

Thanks - think I used to use Jobserve but had completly forgotten the name!

Thanks!!

[northernladuk]

Jobserve and Linkedin. There are other smaller sites like PRS Public sector and Outside IR35 pages but I found this completely useless in the couple of weeks I was looking.

I can't remember seeing anything that was on linkedin but not on jobserve so I ended up really just focussing on jobserve which did what it does and got me in gig yet again. I hear noise about jobserve being less relevant but it's nailed it every single time for me in the last 15 years so still the go to place for me.

[SneakySimon]

So, back in 2015, after 15 odd years contracting, I went perm while my kids were young and ex left.

Fast forward 8 years, seems the bank I work for is potentially going to offer redundency next year which would be a nice pay off and allow me to return to the contracting life!

Feeling a bit rusty - where is a good place to search for contracts nowadays?