Or we can't get them past the HR hiring policies that eliminate all candidates. Been through that myself. I even got multiple tech leads to sit the testing and watched them fail. They were already on the team yet would not be able to get on the team. Absurd but true.

Contracting is such a strange world. I've drifted so far into it I've lost the ability to see how salary based people even get work. All I can do is keep the door open for as many people as possible. Sometimes I need to actually assert the door into existence. This was something I didn't know was possible until recently.