Mike Bishop, the recruitment manager for IT firm Ricoh, tells Recruiter that against a backdrop of change in the market, he would urge candidates to be flexible.

Bishop was speaking to the magazine for the sector focus on p14 of this week’s April edition of the magazine.

The article focuses on the way the industry is balancing use of traditional, permanent employment models against contracting and project work – and the consensus is that keeping the two worlds segregated and unintegrated is counter-productive.

“I would encourage every candidate that is in the market to remain open-minded, because we are seeing such change,” Bishop says, adding that if not, candidates will lose out on a huge number of opportunities.

People who have only done permanent work should not assume this is the only way to work, he says – and on the other side of the equation, the company will ensure it doesn’t just wave goodbye to contractors when their time is up. “When we get a decent contractor, we will certainly do what we can to keep them,” he tells Recruiter.

Lee Chant, managing director of recruiter Hays IT & Telecoms, says that this flexibility is evident. He says professionals “will consider either/or, and they will be very flexible, whereas probably five or six years ago a lot of people would say I’m only interested in perm work or I’m only interested in contract”.

But Mark Dexter, the managing director of information management specialist KDR Recruitment, notes that “there always have and always will be professional contractors who regardless of the state of the market will remain a professional contractor”.

Taking on a temporary role can be a stepping stone, adds Kate Little, people partner (EMEA) at hosting provider Peer 1 Hosting. She tells Recruiter: “People that have gone temp to perm on their CVs … always look great because you think they’ve managed to inspire that company from a temporary position.”

• Click for more on the recruiting efforts of maverick firm Peer 1, and see p14 of the new edition of Recruiter for more.