| Hey there. I made the jump last week. I work in London, and used to work for a FTSE 35 company. I was there for about 2 years, and worked primarily as an Android developer. I'm not sure about the situation where you are, but here in London there's tons of Android contracts. I made the decision to jump about a month and a half ago after getting screwed over a promotion that was promised to me. Any loyalty I had to the company died at that point. I had a month's notice, and two weeks holiday before I quit. Two weeks before I officially handed my notice in, I let my manager know I was contemplating going contracting. She was very understanding, and tried to make me stay. I started phoning round recruitment consultants letting them know my experience & what I was after. After two weeks, twenty plus recruiters, 30 plus contracts, and two interviews, I landed the third interview. The one thing holding me back the most, and probably the reason I didn't land a job sooner was that in contracting land, you're expected to start pretty much the next day, and I had a 2-4 week wait before becoming available. I got the job, started my company the same day (£15 & 15 minutes time). Got an accountant via recommendation & started two weeks later. I'm not going to lie, the jump was terrifying. Losing the security of permanent employment, & imposter syndrome play a big part in keeping people in perm jobs. After a week in this job though, I'm incredibly happy. I'm not getting full contract day rates (£400+), its more around £250, but I'm two years out of uni & doubled my salary by quitting. That's not even including the tax benefits of getting paid via your own company. My advice would be make damn sure you're good enough (not by validating your own abilities, but by getting other contractors to evaluate you), and start getting in touch with recruiters. Your world isn't going to come crumbling down by having a conversation. Oh, and don't trust recruiters. They're a necessary evil. This helped me: http://www.contractoruk.com/ |
This can be true, but can also be a load of cobblers from recruitment agents. On top of that if you contract in banking, the reference/background/credit checks take at least 2-3 weeks anyway.
>> Oh, and don't trust recruiters. They're a necessary evil.
I'd change that to "don't trust all recruiters". If you can find a good one that tells you the truth, stick with them.