Contract work or permanent, which would you take? - 23 weeks in

I got a contract offer for 17 months as a recruiter and I am unsure whether to accept. I have read a lot of threads here and could not find my exact situation. I would gain recent experience. What would you do?

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it 8 months ago, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.