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Current and updated availability - February 2020
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1-Q&A.md

Chris Randle, Senior Developer / Team Leader / Technical Architect

Question: Actively looking for roles? # NO (on contract until March)

  • I have basic security clearance and financial clearance (through Experian 2019).

  • I am passively searching and happy to consider any contract roles. I am not interested in permanent employment. Contracts have more flexibility based on the fact that most contracts expect an on-site presence and this necessitates obtaining suitably located accommodation, meaning that the closer contracts get to London, the more they approach the £500 a day mark.

  • I aim for my rate to be around the £325 a day (+/- £25) for local contract based in the North of the UK. See above for London and surrounding area.

  • I aim to be honest and transparent, so expect the same from those I work with - including the recruiter. We have to work together to close a contract, so that I can get a role and begin earning money for us both. If I find someone I work with to be dishonest or deceitful then I reserve the right to instantly terminate the proceedings regardless of the content of the contract.

Dear Recruitment Agent / Consultant,

Please do not request references (including technical references) before an offer is made since refusal may cause offence. Sorry but blame those fishing for leads using the information unethicall (e.g. as a warm-calling shortcut to circumvent the screening processes from Office Administrators and Receptionists).

I have known recruitment for over two decades. This includes half of 1998 placing Help Desk staff on hourly rates and cold-calling clients to gather leads. Due to this, please understand why I only pick good recruiters to work with. When you have heard every line imaginable about 100 times (i.e. "I've just come across a copy of your CV on Jobsite", "where have you applied to already?", "we need 2 technical references to support your application", etc). I completely appreciate how frustrating the industry can be, however, I have formed some excellent relationships with some agents who are very good at their job. If you feel you can be honest with me, I will return the favour. I don't want agents who are not going to do the job for more than 18-24 months. I want more people on my own contractor-agent PSL which is similar to your client's agency PSL's! :-)

Ideally I work on weekly invoicing with 7 day payment terms from date of issue. This means I submit a timesheet and/or invoice at the end of my first week and it should clear by the following Friday.

I always want to know the following so please have the information available for me as it reduces the wastage of time for us both

  • What is the contract length?
  • What is the day rate?
  • Can I work remotely?
  • What are your payment terms?
  • What is the client's location?
  • What is the duration of travel from my house to the client - by car?
  • What is the duration of travel from my house to the client - by public transport?

Contact details:

  • 1 - The number is actually a rented Skype number, but behaves the same when calling. Basically, it is a landline *
  • 2 - full stops are ignored by Gmail so alternatives are identical inboxes*

Where are you located?

Shipley, nr Bradford (BD18)

Are you willing to relocate?

Yes

When did you finish your last role and what have you been doing since then?

Current on contract

Would you consider permanent?

No, at the moment I am not interested in permanent. Only 100% remote.

Should the role offer less remote, but more of a salary, then provided that salary could be paid weekly initially then I'd certainly consider it. I'm more interested in exposure to new technologies and challanges than simply a high salary. I am passionate about development, and enjoy the times I have been able to mentor other more junior developers within businesses. Few things can compare with seeing that spark of interest triggered in someone else about something that I am a strong advocate of.

  • Last updated February 2020
  • All rights reserved.
  • All information contained here is private and should not be communicated without express prior permission, including my resumé.
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2-CoveringLetter.md

Dear Agency or Prospective Employer,

Please consider the attached copy of my CV in respect of any vacancies you have for a Senior or Lead .NET Developer. I also specialise in the Umbraco CMS, and to a lesser extent EPiServer CMS.

There is around 15 years of experience using JavaScript (i.e. Vanilla.JS) and C# (reached through Java, VBA and VB.NET). These are perhaps my greatest technical strengths.

I favour fullstack development but with a larger part of the experience in my career as back-end (65% of my work) but with sufficient knowledge of all aspects of the SDLC. This includes elements from Account or Project Management (e.g. client facing meetings, communication of technical matters to non-technically literate individuals), through full-stack Development (front-end and back-end), incorporating Testing (e.g. Unit Testing and Integration Testing - as BDD, TDD, DDD, etc), and lastly to to DevOps (e.g. Azure, AWS, Rackspace and Docker)

On the front-end have found myself working with Bootstrap 3 (and some limited 4), HTML5 (migrated my skillset from HTML / HTML4), CSS3 (migrated my skillset as with HTML), jQuery (including animation), Node (NPM and general NodeJS), Knockout, and TypeScript.

One of my most rewarding and proudest briefs was when I fixed an “unfixable” Umbraco issue that was causing the home page for authenticated users to load extremely slowly (around 40 seconds) after previously taking 3 seconds. Premium support calls were placed to Umbraco HQ, and numerous other agencies tried to fix this issue. The director who hired me went on holiday the day after I started, and the Lead informed me in no uncertain terms that “Umbraco was buggy” and that they were to scrap the CMS and go back to a static website since the issue was “obviously caused by Umbraco”. I was told that if I didn’t do as the Lead told me that he had the power to fire me, but I was torn between the brief given to me by the hiring Director – and the experienced .NET and SQL (but inexperienced Umbraco) Lead Developer.

Despite me being refused any request that would allow me to look at the Umbraco bug (especially visiting the Live environment due to the client being a financial institution and security being critical) I vowed to fix this issue no matter what. With some lateral thinking, and political manoeuvring, I proudly resolved this “difficult” issue which caused a stressful situation within 3 days. I fulfilled my obligation to the Lead Developer by doing his work, but spent my own time working on the Umbraco fix. Once I had a copy of the Live environment (obtained with copious amounts of cakes bought for DevOps!) I quickly ascertained that two application pools were assigned to one website instance. This was a throwback to Umbraco 3 where the CMS had two separate distinct websites. As soon as I shut down one of them, the page load time dropped back to normal.

I hope to have the opportunity to bring yourself or your client similar resolutions. I will relish any challenge – and appreciate any opportunity to demonstrate my abilities. Thank you for your consideration. Kind regards, Chris Randle

• All rights - including this document’s copyright - are reserved by the author and subject of this document - Chris Randle.
• All of this document’s contents are the sole property of Chris Randle and his subsidiary companies.
• You agree only to distribute this document to companies that have been named on a “Right to Represent” agreement explicitly consented by Chris Randle, and he will not be discussed with anyone other than these third parties (i.e. with previous employees or colleagues) unless by prior consent.
• You will not use this document in mailshots or in any other means of unsolicited mail or spam.
• You will not undertake references until a job offer has been made. References and referees will be made available upon acceptance of such an offer.
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