Profile picture for user Matt Collingwood

Matt Collingwood

Matt Collingwood is the Managing Director of VIQU Ltd. an IT recruitment and project-based consultancy company with offices in Birmingham and Southampton. Matt is also the co-founder of the Recruitment Canaries, a network of West Midlands based recruitment agencies who encourage collaboration, best practice and upholding the standards and ethics of the recruitment industry.

Author Content

When the IT contractor who shows up for work isn’t the UK citizen/PSC director who landed the role.

Responses like ‘Chocolate’ are among the no-nos for IT contractors asked to fess up their Achilles heel.

14th November, 2024 | Successful Contracting

A guide on the first of a few age-old job interview questions that IT contractors love to hate.

16th October, 2024 | Successful Contracting

The taxman is turning up the IR35 heat with six-page OPW audits, containing up to 13 information requests.

2nd October, 2024 | Private Sector IR35 Reform

Top tips from a tech agent who’s seeing once-successful, skilled, IT contractors broken by tumbleweed.

21st August, 2024 | Successful Contracting

A sceptical agent’s Excel test is a sign of things to come -- but don’t take it personally, our job is to work out if what you say about your skills is true.

As a new political dawn breaks, let’s not be rose-tinted about the future of IT contracting under the architects of IR35, but it’s clear a bum deal is now behind us.

How to cope and get hired in a yoyo-ing market, where ghosting, rejection, and no callbacks are taking a toll.

This stance as an agency boss on regulating umbrella companies will banish me from the Christmas card list of the big staffing bodies.

The number of techies set to start temp roles (like our projects pipeline), turned a corner in March 2024.

Four things candidates don’t want to hear, plus six secrets agencies really don’t want you to know.

26th February, 2024 | Guide To Agencies

What to tell an agent if you suspect you’re on the end of their fishing expedition.

20th February, 2024 | Guide To Agencies

What the IT contractor jobs market currently looks like, and why. 

The hard, soft, and still emerging skills required to succeed with Artificial Intelligence on a contract basis.

A new era of fraudulent interviews (now in progress) needs to be stamped out by the professional community.

Wading out into freelance waters is much more reassuring when you can see the following five over your shoulder.

31st October, 2023 | First Timers

A bit of crystal ball gazing to help ensure your priorities as a freelance software developer get sorted for next year.

Top 12 tried and tested tips for limited company techies on keeping both aged debt and bad debt at bay.

21st September, 2023 | Guide To Agencies

Whether you want to break into it, or move across from your current specialism, these variables and lines lead to software engineering.

14th September, 2023 | Successful Contracting

Top 10 ways contractors’ recruiters can separate the reputable from the rogue, when selecting a brolly partner.