According to an experiment by the Manpower Organization (OAED) and major international job-seeking websites for the self-employed, despite a crushing economic crisis that has put nearly two million people out of work, many Greeks are reluctant to even look.
The newspaper Kathimerini, which participated by offering positions on-line, found many Greeks weren’t interested in trying to compete with outsourcers from Asia for low-paying positions, even the young, who are suffering from 54.9 percent unemployment.
On those sites, employers describe the job or jobs that a freelance professional would perform for them and registered professionals bid to land the job, but they often have to pay a fee to compete for jobs in which there are many bidders, including those from Asia, who often are willing to work for very little money.
Among the best-known platforms of this kind on a global level are Freelancer. com, Peopleperhour. com, Hireagreek. org (created exclusively for employers abroad to commission Greek employees), and RealWritingJobs.com, but their fees are out of reach for some unemployed and even on sites which require no fee there is often ferocious competition for little pay.
According to Kathimerini’s survey many Greek freelancers have registered with these agencies and uploaded profiles but their accounts remain idle. They do not search for jobs,do not systematically check for any new offers and tend to respond to job invitations surprisingly late or most of the times the prefer not to respond at all.
Greek freelancers appear to have little interest in jobs with a small payment. Therefore they tend to snub jobs that fetch 50 or 100 euros – e. g. for text translations,getting a website’s problem fixed etc. – which then go to other nationalities – e.g. British, Americans, Germans or Indians. The newspaper did not mention that many of the jobs pay pay as little as 5 to 10 euros for several hours work.
Kathimerini registered as an employer, uploaded various job posts with offers and then waited for bids from freelancers. To make the experiment more representative, Kathimerini appeared at times as different employees from different sectors and different countries. Therefore it appeared as a self-employed professional who did not have time for certain jobs, as a British entrepreneur who wanted someone to create a number of websites, and as a small Greek businessman who was in need of some text translators. The jobs weren’t real so people who applied had no chance at work.
The experiment lasted for about three months and the result was astonishing: Not a single Greek freelancer responded to any of the job offers. The only one who did respond was too late, as the job had already been given to a foreigner. The employer in this experiment, preferred to give his jobs to Greeks: when he uploaded a job offer, he would alert Greeks who worked in that particular field, e.g. for a website, he would alert web developers and IT experts, for contracts he would contact lawyers and so on. In contrast, the response from freelancers in other countries was impressive, as they had ensured they got e-mail alerts for any job offers uploaded.
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