Face off: Jobserve.co.uk vs Gulp.de

[darrenb]

JOBSERVE.CO.UK

Number of contract listings, last 7 days, within 25 miles of London:

• Oracle: 355
• SAP: 166
• Java: 450

GULP.DE

Number of projekt listings, last 7 days, all of Germany:

• Oracle: 115
• SAP: 177
• Java: 159

Am I missing something? If the German economy is doing so well, why are the listings so poor? If you break it into cities (Frankfurt, Berlin, etc.) the results are pathetic.

[darmstadt]

Jobserve.DE

Oracle: 149

Actually GULP is a bit different to Jobserve as the jobs actually exist and aren't agents trawling for references There is a lot more to it than Jobserve, there are even forums like CUK, there are survey regarding agencies, including which are good/bad, you can have your won website or classified advertisements, there are a lot of statistics and there is a lot of information about contracting on it which I don't see in Jobserve.

I actually pay for GULP and get a lot out of it including jobs that are not advertised there. I've even worked for GULP themselves and those positions were definitely not advertised. Also a lot of companies advertise on there own pages within GULP.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Heh! I was going to say exactly what darmstadt said. IME the number of jobs on jobserve is not a good indication of the jobs available in the UK, and I think that most people here would back that up. A search on jobserve always comes up with more jobs for me in the UK than anywhere else, but I haven't managed to land a real one in many many years. OTOH I have a steady stream of work in NL, D, CH (and F if I can accept the rates). People there are often surprised that I can't find work at home, and in a couple of cases have actually plugged my skills into JS for me, to show that I could! I have had to explain that what you see is not really what you get.

You start thinking that it's normal (that most posted jobs don't exist), but it isn't. IMHO it's actually one more case where what you see in Germany is the substance, what you see in the UK is just a front.

[darrenb]

I thought that might be it. But will I have to stump up €120 to compete with Germans for hidden listings?

Also I don't speak German yet , and I don't know how many of these Gulp ads would insist on that.

[darmstadt]

A fair bit of the GULP site is also in English and in the last newsletter there was an article suggsting that contractors also put their profiles not only in German but also in English on the website. They even have on their website lists of hotels around Germany recommended by contractors along with contractor friendly accountants.