I know the market may be a little slow in places but....

[flipFlop]

I have wondered if any of these roles are Clients being bold enough to 'test the waters' so to speak and advertise a role (say a PM or BA type role) for £150-200 asking for the usual requirements that someone after £450-500+ would expect.

Very astute.

[CloudWalker]

"Its a Trap!"

Well more of a Trick! A lot of companies have to advertise internal jobs externally by law (even if they have already found the guy they want on the inside.) This is sometimes because of department redundancies and job reassignments.
I know as it happened to me.

[psychocandy]

Mate of mine did a role for £100 for a few weeks.

Basically, he had to sit at home, then if they rung him he had to go to a customer site (all within about 30 miles of his house). Ended up doing about 5 hours work a week.

Sounds OK. £100 for sitting there most of the day LOL. Of course, when something decent came along he was off like a shot.

[flipFlop]

...do they really think people will take these contracts on?

Agents will get a lot of script-kiddies' applying at these sort of rates.

[KentPhilip]

P.S: Tata means bye bye in my local dialect.

TTFN - Ta ta for now..

[Mephisto]

I have wondered if any of these roles are Clients being bold enough to 'test the waters' so to speak and advertise a role (say a PM or BA type role) for £150-200 asking for the usual requirements that someone after £450-500+ would expect.

I can't speak for all areas and London is probably still the exception, but if any of them cotton on to the desperation out there then they could be onto a supply/demand style winner IMHO.

[rurffy]

These rate are usually for starters. Junior ITs with no knowledge/experience - Blaggers usually end up getting these.

And im sure the interview process would be though

[tranceporter]

...do they really think people will take these contracts on?

Must be a bob position for TCS and the likes. Going through the usual visa abuse of "Oh we advertised for the role but did not find anyone suitable", and then hire a bob. Wouldn't be surprised if they conducted a couple of interviews for the sake of it, and failed everyone apart from the bob.
P.S: Tata means bye bye in my local dialect.

[amcdonald]

Surely you could rent a castle on that kind of rate oop north though

[Murder1]

...do they really think people will take these contracts on?

I hope you are well?
My Client in Bradford is looking for a VB6 developer on a 3 month contract. The day rate for the contract is around £115 per day (absolute max!)
Skills Required:
o Visual Basic 6
o SQL Server 2000, 2005
o Classic ASP
o Java Script
o C# (desirable)
o ASP.Net (desirable)
o ASP.net MVC (desirable)
o Java (desirable)