ContractDB

News from ContractDB

13th April 2008. Increased cost (to client only) of successful engagement from £1000 to £1250. Still an excellent bargain.

30th August 2007. Extended list of countries to catch up with EU enlargement.

30th April 2005. Complete rewrite of target Web pages in paid-for search engines. Significant increase in number of campaigns (from 5 to 25) soon.

18th October 2004. New promotion in search engines for ContractDB project/program managers

10th October 2004. New navigation tabs for Contractor and Select pages make these pages shorter and easier to use.

23rd September 2004. Complete rewrite of ContractDB site from older Java to Struts. Future enhancements to the site should now be much easier.

1st November 2003. Specific promotions in search engines of skills on ContractDB for: IBM, Java, Linux, Microsoft, Oracle

28th October 2003. ContractDB site getting busier in line with general upturn in contract market in UK particularly in last few months. All members over last 4 years revisited to bring their current details (skills, availability etc.) up to date.

18th July 2003. Migrated ContractDB site from IBM AS/400 to Linux RedHat running on Dell server. Interactive response time and time to complete searches significantly improved.

15th February 2003. Made skill categories optional in searches - can now search on skill keywords alone.

29th July 2002. Revised skill categories. Added 'PHP' as a new category under 'Internet'.

22nd July 2002. Revised skill categories. Added 'PICK' as a new category under 'Other Platforms'. Added 'Emergency Services' under the 'Business' Category.

4th May 2002. Revised contractor regions. Added new button to 'non-Home' countries for contractors to quickly indicate availability in any non-Home country (instead of having to select each country individually).

13th April 2002. Revised skill categories

Added '.NET' to Microsoft category
Added 'Travel/Tourism' to Business category

25th March 2002. Added separate URL (promoted directly in search engines) to senior consultants registered with ContractDB.

29th January 2002. Revised skill categories

New category 'Java - Swing'.
New category 'Other Tools - CISCO'.
Split 'Other Platform - Linux/Apache' into 'Other Platform - Linux' and 'Other Tools - Apache'.

7th December 2001. Sundry enhancements

Clarified contractor input of skill years (years experience) to be whole years only. Part years (e.g. 1.5 for one and a half years) now automatically rounded up/down to nearest whole number.
Introduced new category of membership (Approved/Limited) so some contractors can still be found in searches, but can not see contact details for other contractors in their own searches.

25th September 2001. Extended Contractor 'Home Country' options. Added new option for contractor preference regarding work in home country. Previous options ('Will only work in home country', 'Prefer to work in home country' etc.) all required contractor to express a preference. New option 'No opinion re: home/other country' allows contractor to indicate no particular preference.

8th August 2001. Fix for possible loss of input. Fixed situation where 'Update' button clicked from incompletely loaded Web page might cause loss of input. Should be rare e.g. if user clicks 'Stop' in browser while Web page is loading, then 'Update' button. System now detects if input Web page incompletely loaded and prompts for retry.

14th July 2001. Membership/contractor enhancements

New members can now indicate main interest in ContractDB i.e. as client or contractor. Enables us to approve membership more easily.
Contractors can provide a link to their own Web site. This appears in search results as a clickable URL.

20th May 2001. New skill categories. Added Publishing/Media and Mining to Business categories. Added JNDI and J2ME to Java categories. Renamed Java-JMQ to Java-JMS. Moved Javascript from Java to Internet category.

13th May 2001. Revised Oracle categories. Elevated Oracle from single entry under 'Other Platform' to major Skills category with its own components - Developer, Designer etc. Existing members need to revisit the Oracle section (sorry - there was no sensible way to carry forward anything under the old single Oracle category). New Oracle skills defined with assistance from ContractDB members - thank you. Any further comments welcome.

8th May 2001. Simplified search selections. Revised options under the Select button. Replaced input text boxes with clickable radio buttons. Revised input sequence to be more logical. Entry of search selections should now be considerably faster.

March 2001. Navigation explained. Introduced extra text to explain what top-level navigation buttons do e.g. which buttons should be used by clients and which should be used by contractors.

December 2000. Demo Search: Introduced a 'Simple Search' button for first-time users (no previous searches). This allows users to proceed immediately with a search for two default skills (VB and HTML) to see very quickly how the search engine works. The two default skills can be revised later.

November 2000. Skills revised. Spilt 'Trainer/Tester' role skill into two separate skills 'Trainer' and 'Tester'. All skill years previously under 'Trainer/Tester' now under 'Tester'. This new split recognises that Tester skills often quite different from Trainer skills.

October 2000.

Operating System software upgrade on 18th October produced unexpected (and rare) problems - particularly in terms of access to our Web site. Most issues now resolved, but service to users over last week not what it should have been. Apologies to all concerned.
Regions: Defined many more regions for non-UK European countries.
Exclusions: Extended (for both client and contractor) to allow exclusion based on string contained anywhere in email address.

September 2000.

Skill Years: Increased maximum number of years allowed for individual search/contractor skills from 10 to 30. Many contractors wanted to record more than 10 years experience in various skills. No change to search engine.
Search Result options: Introduced additional buttons to control the display of contractor skills in search results. Three options: 1) No skills, 2) Only contractor/search skills actually matched, 3) All skills (default before this upgrade). 1) and 2) now allow a less detailed search results display - useful because of the high numbers of skills being entered by many contractors.
Email details: New button to email contractor profile (summary of ContractDB details held for each contractor) to clients email address. Useful for off-line review of search results. Complements existing option to email contractor CV.
Skill Categories: Introduced 'Role' skills group. Designed to reflect nature of responsibility in contract work. Contractors often do not have official job titles but should still select appropriate role(s), rather than the generic 'consultant'.
Business Skills: Added Healthcare, Manufacturing and Construction/Housing to the 'Business' skills group.
Introduced additional 'skill keywords' facility. This is designed to supplement, rather than replace the existing 'skill years' input. Simple keyword-only searches will never, in our opinion, provide clients with the fine-grained selectivity they want.
New introductory screens for first-time users (any user not yet logged on).
Added new field 'Total Years Experience' to contractor input. Memorandum field only - not used by search engine, but appears in search results.
Fixed bug where email address stored in cookie was being used more than intended. Should only ever be a default for member logon.
Search engine changes: Changed ranking for years experience on skills i.e. revised percentages where contractor has more experience than required. Before this change, contractors with 'excess' experience would always outrank other contractors with less experience. After this change, there is now a more exact match on the years experience specified by clients on searches.

August 2000.

Countries/Regions: Added specific regions for all countries e.g. London, South West, Thames Valley etc. for United Kingdom. For other countries (just Western Europe at this time), regions not yet fully defined - coming soon. All regions for all countries soft-coded, so can easily be changed. Clients can now select specific region in country where contract is based. Contractors specify all regions in all countries where they are prepared to work (including a "anywhere in country" option). Search engine now matches contractor and client regions exactly.
Added the ability for clients to limit searches to contractors whose home country same as client e.g. UK-based contractors only for a UK-based contract.
Exclusions: Clients can now select individual contractors to exclude from searches. Contractors can also select clients to exclude. All exclusions can be managed i.e. revoked or reinstated.

20th July 2000. Web site goes live.