IT Recruiter Q&A: What Every UK Contractor Needs to Know in 2026
A London-based independent IT recruiter with a decade of experience recruiting SWE, Data and DevOps roles across Europe recently ran an Ask Me Anything thread on r/ContractorUK - and was, by his own admission, 'bombarded with questions'. What follows is an edited summary of the most useful exchanges, organised by theme. The recruiter's answers are reproduced faithfully; where context or FCJ commentary has been added, it is clearly marked as such.
The current market: honest answers
The thread opened with the question many contractors are quietly thinking but rarely hear answered directly.
Q How is the market currently compared to a year ago, and what are your predictions for a year's time?
A Anyone's guess on predictions. More roles are coming through now but they are still taking a very long time to close.
That last point - roles taking longer to close - is one of the most consistent signals from the contracting market in 2025 and into 2026. Even where demand exists, procurement processes are slower, approval chains are longer and clients are more cautious about committing.
Q When did the market turn so bad? Day rates seem to be below where they were 15-20 years ago in nominal terms, never mind real terms. What's the main driver?
A About 2023. Loads of different things - Ukraine, global economic uncertainty, IR35 reform bedding in. It's not one single cause.
Q Are there any green shoots for contract or perm work?
A More roles coming through now, but still taking a very long time to close.
FCJ note: the data broadly supports this. APSCo and REC figures show IT contract vacancy volumes up around 11% year-on-year in early 2026, but conversion rates from application to placement remain well below pre-2023 levels. The volume is recovering; the speed of hiring is not.
Rates: what's really happening
Q Why are rates so low for some roles? Is it because companies have low budgets, or are recruiters taking a large cut on low-value roles?
A Because it's really easy to get staff at the moment, hence rates are pushed down lower and lower. Supply exceeds demand in most generalist areas.
Q If a rate is offered at £500 per day to me, how much is the recruitment company taking - and how much leeway do I have to push for more?
A Normally 20%. If I'm paying someone £400 per day, I want to charge the client £500 and have £100 gross margin per day as a minimum. If someone is on £700 and I charge £800, I'm normally happy with that. I need £100 per day as a minimum regardless of the rate level.
This is unusually candid and worth understanding. If your rate is £400 per day, your agency is likely billing the client £480 to £500. At £700 per day, they may be billing £800 to £850. The margin percentage compresses as rates rise, but the agency's minimum floor stays roughly constant. This is useful context when negotiating - the agency cannot give you their entire margin, but there is usually some room between what they offered and what they told the client.
Q How do I deal with a recruiter who talks me through all the detail and then reveals a rate of £325 with not much room to move?
A Ask for the rate as soon as you receive the call. There's no point talking about the job for 20 minutes if the money isn't going to work out.
This is the single most practical piece of advice in the thread. Open every recruiter call with: 'Before we go into detail, what's the rate on this role?' It saves time for both parties and prevents the sunk-cost psychology of a long conversation making a bad rate feel more acceptable than it is.
Q Can you renegotiate your rate for an inside IR35 role if the end client wants to extend beyond the initial six months?
A Yes.
Worth emphasising. Extensions are frequently treated as automatic renewals on the same terms. They do not have to be. A successful delivery on the initial engagement gives you demonstrable leverage. Raise the rate conversation at least six weeks before the end date.
Outside IR35: the view from a recruiter's desk
Q How is the outside IR35 market looking for DevOps, SRE and operability roles?
A Not good.
Q Do you see many outcome-based roles rather than day rate? Or roles that are not five days a week?
A No, not at all.
The recruiter's brevity here speaks volumes. Outcome-based and part-time contract structures are discussed frequently in contractor forums as the theoretically ideal model - but in practice they remain rare, particularly in DevOps and infrastructure. The market has not structurally shifted away from time-and-materials day rate contracting. Outside IR35 work exists but is concentrated in specific circumstances: genuinely project-based engagements, smaller private sector clients, and specialist niche roles where clients accept they must offer outside IR35 status to secure the talent they need.
One community member added useful context: 'Most roles are inside IR35 now - zero-rights employment - so the client is well within their rights to stipulate office days. If it's outside IR35 and they are stating a fixed number of office days, that is a flag the role probably is not genuinely outside, as true outside IR35 means the business supplier controls how and where the work is done.'
CVs, applications and how recruiters actually work
Q How do you deal with a high volume of applications? Do you use software tools for an initial sift?
A I don't use tools to scan CVs. LinkedIn, company database. Clear layout, no filler text, technical skills and value delivered clearly displayed. Yes, I check CVs.
Q How do you sift through all the applications? It feels like I'm being gaslit when I'm told to change my CV for every role.
A There's a myth that it's only the 'best' people who get jobs. I can assure you that is not the case. There's no one single source of better applicants.
This is a striking admission. The candidate who gets the contract is not always the most technically capable - they are often the one who applied at the right time, had a CV that was easy to read quickly, and was available to move fast. This does not mean technical quality is irrelevant, but it does mean that speed, clarity and availability matter more than contractors typically assume.
Q If someone submits their CV during a quiet period like summer, are they easily lost and forgotten when things pick up?
A No, they are added to a CRM. I normally run a boolean search when resourcing CVs for a role, then send a mailshot.
The practical implication: registering with agencies when you are not actively looking is not wasted effort. Your CV sits in the database and can surface months later when a relevant role comes in. Keep your registered CV updated even between active searches.
Q Do you penalise CVs that have been revised with AI?
A I don't use tools to scan CVs.
The recruiter does not run AI detection tools. What this does not mean is that generic, clearly templated AI output is invisible to human reviewers. A CV that reads as though it could belong to anyone - full of vague capability statements and no specific delivery evidence - will be deprioritised whether or not it was AI-generated. The issue is not the tool used to write it; it is the absence of specificity.
Q What makes a good candidate? How does someone move from the 'maybe' pile to the 'must get' pile?
A Longevity, seniority. People who have worked for Google or Microsoft are highly sought after.
Brand-name employer history is a real signal, for better or worse. If you have worked for a recognisable organisation - large bank, major tech company, government digital programme - make that visible. If you have not, the equivalent is specific, named clients with describable outcomes - not generic 'financial services client' entries.
LinkedIn and personal branding: what actually matters
Q How important is an active LinkedIn profile when you're sourcing candidates? I haven't posted for more than a year.
A Not really that important at all, to be honest. Personal branding - loads of people seem to be selling courses on this but it's not something that has particularly interested me.
Q Why do recruiters use every life event to peg a job post onto the end? Holiday photos with roles in the description?
A I've no idea.
Q Do you write the cringey LinkedIn posts or just read them for the pure ridiculousness?
A Mostly all written by ChatGPT now.
The recruiter's view on LinkedIn is more pragmatic than the personal branding industry would have you believe. For sourcing purposes, your LinkedIn profile needs to be findable (the right keywords in your headline and experience), complete enough to pass a quick credibility check, and consistent with your CV. It does not need to be a content publishing machine. If you enjoy writing and find it generates client interest, carry on - but contractors who never post and maintain a well-structured profile are not missing significant opportunity according to this recruiter.
Skills and specialisation: where the work is
Q The contracting market has been quiet since 2023. Is it better to specialise in niche skills that pay more, or add broader skills to widen the kinds of roles you can get?
A Niche skills.
Q Which roles are less saturated right now?
A Niche positions in the SAP market, commodities, specialised SCADA - for example nuclear power, water treatment, utilities.
Q Do you see many people moving from data science into AI and ML engineering?
A Yes - a lot of people are trying to get into AI due to the current bubble. No real tips other than to tailor your CV correctly and just apply.
Q For data engineering and data roles generally - what are the highest demand skills and platforms in the UK?
A [The recruiter invited a follow-up on specifics - the question was not fully developed in the thread.]
The recruiter's view on specialisation is consistent with every major market data source: niche beats broad in a supply-heavy market. The specific niches mentioned - SAP, commodities technology, industrial SCADA - are areas where the intersection of technical skill and domain knowledge creates genuine scarcity. The AI point is equally honest: many people are trying to move into it, which means the 'just move into AI' advice is less reliable than it was a year ago. Demonstrated production AI delivery experience is the differentiator, not a newly updated LinkedIn headline.
Q How is the Business Analyst contract market looking?
A BA roles exist but they are few and far between right now.
Recruiter behaviour decoded
Q Why do recruiters call, leave a voicemail saying I'm a strong candidate, then become unreachable when I call back within an hour?
A I guess it's disorganisation and lack of courtesy.
Q Why do recruiters reach out when they have no job spec or agreed rate to share?
A If you get a call out of the blue from a recruiter with no job to talk about, they're fishing for leads and market intelligence - where you are interviewing, whether your current client is hiring. This is the best source of leads and business development. The problem is most recruiters are bad at this, which is one of the reasons they don't last.
This is genuinely useful intelligence. When a recruiter calls you out of the blue with nothing concrete, they are trying to find out who else is hiring - not to help you find a job. Whether you engage with that conversation is your choice. One community member noted: 'Unless you want extra competition for roles you're already interviewing for.' A fair point.
Q Why are most recruiters so difficult to deal with?
A Because of the way opportunities in the industry are sold, and the fact that there are no real barriers to entry. It tends to attract a certain type of individual. There are exceptions.
Q What makes you different from those recruiters?
A Honesty, integrity, reliability.
European contracts and remote working
Q Do you see many fully remote contracts from Europe for UK-based contractors? How do European day rates compare to UK rates?
A Occasionally - I have two people currently working for a client in Spain. They're not that common. Day rates in southern Europe are much lower than Benelux, DACH and the Nordics.
Q What about contracting in the Middle East?
A The vast majority of contracts in the Middle East require people on site 100% of the time.
The European remote contract market is real but limited. The recruiter's experience of placing two people remotely into a Spanish client is representative of the scale - individual pockets of demand rather than a systematic market. For contractors keen on European remote work, direct outreach to employers and European-specific platforms is likely to be more productive than relying on UK agency pipelines.
Office attendance requirements
Q What's the deal with employers wanting contractors in the office a fixed number of days a week? Seems strange for a B2B relationship, especially in software development.
A It really depends entirely on the set-up the client has. Some are militant about people being in the office; others aren't.
The community added useful context here: inside IR35 contracts carry no IR35-based protection against office attendance requirements. If you are engaged inside IR35, the hirer can legitimately require office attendance, set working hours and direct your activities - because the tax treatment reflects that reality. For outside IR35 engagements, a fixed office attendance requirement is a potential flag that the working arrangement may not genuinely be outside IR35 in practice.
Starting your own recruitment agency
Q I think finding talent and filling roles in my niche would be relatively easy. What is the hardest part of running a recruitment agency?
A The hardest part is business development and getting new customers. Finding candidates in the current market is 90% of the time pretty easy. Set up the same way you set up any other business.
A direct answer that punctures the common assumption that recruitment agencies are primarily in the business of finding talent. They are primarily in the business of finding clients. The supply side - candidates - has never been easier to source. The demand side - companies willing to pay agency fees and put you on their approved supplier list - is the genuine constraint. Anyone considering starting a recruitment agency in IT contracting should be clear-eyed that it is a sales business first and a talent business second.
The thread in summary
Reading across the full Q&A, a few consistent themes emerge from this recruiter's perspective:
The market is recovering but slowly. More roles exist than a year ago, but they are closing slowly. Patience and sustained activity matter more than any single application.
Rates are low because supply is high, not because agencies are taking excessive margins. A minimum £100 per day gross margin on a placed contractor is the target; the contractor's share of the remaining rate is genuinely most of it.
CVs matter but not in the way most contractors think. Speed of response, clear formatting and visible delivery evidence matter more than comprehensive coverage of every technology ever touched. A recruiter scrolling 50 CVs is looking for reasons to include, not reasons to exclude.
LinkedIn activity is not the priority most personal branding consultants suggest. A well-structured, keyword-rich profile that can be found by a boolean search is sufficient. Posting weekly is optional.
Niche beats broad in 2026. The recruiter's one-word answer - 'niche skills' - when asked whether to specialise or broaden is consistent with every other market signal. The contractors doing best are those who have developed specific, defensible expertise in areas where supply is genuinely thin.
When a recruiter calls you cold with nothing to offer, they are not trying to help you. Understanding that dynamic lets you engage with it on your own terms rather than someone else's.
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