Excellent article. I was a contractor in the UK for ten years and this hits all the most important points. Thanks for posting. Once you have a 6m+ contract und

Excellent article. I was a contractor in the UK for ten years and this hits all the most important points. Thanks for posting. Once you have a 6m+ contract under your belt, look at recruiters again. As distasteful as they are (and they are), 90%+ of the most valuable contracts go through them. I would love for these parasitic fucks to be disintermediated, but if that was going to happen it would have happened by now, so live with it. Your problem with recruiters is that you are having 'friendly conversations' with them. This identifies you as a mark whom the recruiter can place into a £400/day contact and pay you £200. This happens ALL THE TIME and is the bread and butter of many recruiters. The thing to remember about recruiters is that they have no clue about the industry they're recruiting for. If they did, they would be working in it, not recruiting for it. So, the only real clue they have of how good you are is how good you SAY you are. So do not be friendly to recruiters - treat them was what they are - odious middlemen who need you. As you say, not signing anything with them is good. Another good strategy is to contemptuously dismiss the first contract a recruiter mentions. "This small-time crap? Sorry, I though you guys were top-drawer." Recruitment is HELLISHLY competitive and the churn is savage. Recruiters are sharks, and they think like sharks. But they NEED you. They will absolutely fight over you if they think you are worth fighting over. Don't bother until you have a contract under your belt. But once you have, start treating recruiters badly and see what happens. :)