Permie Role

Another subject that could be raised by the agent, before the interview, is that the agent might say that the company can recruit a contractor, but has a system which allows going permanent after 6 months.

The usual response by IT contractors is to turn it down, but I believe there is an opportunity waiting in there. You have a six month contract on offer, with  very few competitors and no legal compunction for you to take the permanent job after 6 months.


Keep You

If you are doing well, the company may show interest in retaining you while in normal circumstances you wouldn’t want to turn permanent. What you could say at the end of the six months is that you have certain financial commitments from before, which would put you in serious financial difficulty if you turned permanent now, but would certainly lessen in, say, another six months. The ruse just might work and they’ll usually agree to another ‘temporary’ six months.


Things Change

Once you’ve been with a company for a year, you  realize and register a lot of changes  in the company e.g. your boss has moved on, been sidelined, or been promoted, or there is a freeze on hiring new permanent staff, or there is only budget for IT contractors or a dozen other reasons.

If that comes to that, you can always say that, in the intervening year, you changed your mind about going permanent, and now hope to be kept on as a contractor.


The Worst

Now that you’ve got a year’s experience of the place and you’ve done well, chances are they will keep you on, and you would have had pretty much a free run at the interview in the beginning.

The worst that can happen is that you’ve had a year’s contracting money out of it.