Well it's partially a marketing issue, to answer your question of why interviews. It's recruiters who find me, and they present me as a contractor (when I sign

Well it's partially a marketing issue, to answer your question of why interviews. It's recruiters who find me, and they present me as a contractor (when I signal I'm searching for this). The people I used to work with tend to ping me for full-time roles only, unfortunately, and word-of-mouth seems to be a common contractor route. Finding clients outside of that requires what I expect is a social media presence, possibly publications and talks. None of which I've undertaken. No one trusts the "resume/CV" track record, not in contracting and not in full-time roles. It's either word-of-mouth or some other method of trust, if it isn't a set of interviews. I've picked up a decent full-time role to refurnish my image, as running an infrastructure with staff, you'd expect, should be impressive. I'm skeptical of the contract market. And to go back to the original thread, I found myself getting spurned due to age for any role which wasn't technical/managerial in the world of full-time work once I went back to it.