The view from the other side

Continuing this theme of recruitment consultant hatred here is a view from an acquaintance from the other side:

It was the worst job I have ever had in my life.

Not only do you have to be professionally two-faced, lie on a daily basis to both clients and candidates but you also have to be completely cold-blooded and uncaring.
I worked in quite a small market placing people into Social Housing positions. The jobs weren't particularly well paid in the first place, and then you had to take a cut of it - so a £10 an hour placement quickly became a £6 an hour job for the candidate.

I went home thoroughly demotivated every day. The culture is competative and the majority of recruitment consultants only cared about how big a margin they could negotiate and how much money they earned. Very, very few actually had anything interesting about them.

What has happened over the last few days

I got caught in the fake job bullshit again, in that normally big recruitment agency firms like Reed or Man power rarely have fake jobs, but quite recently even they have been putting up fake jobs and just lying through their teeth. I was told by Reed Manchester that there would be a job at Cowgill Holloway in Manchester. But I know the HR person there, and know of a couple of people who have survived the chop. I phoned them up immediately after the call with the agent, no such vacancy existed. Same thing happened with CLB coopers.

Some recruitment firms are even worse in that they simply make up a name of an accountancy firm, they thing we are stupid or something? In that we can't search the ACCA or ACA or CIMA lists if these companies exist or not? Or even just go through Yell?.

I've always hated people who have given false hope to others as it would be better to have not given them hope in the first place.

British companies don't want British workers

So much for Gordon' s promise of British jobs for British workers here

Really? (daily wail alert)

Or here?

I don't blame the Polish for seeking out work; seeking out opportunities to work is commendable. I don't blame the Indian people for dismantling the UK IT industry either. I blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for destroying the country. To actively encourage job destruction through unfair competition is treasonous. They are meant to make decisions that help the British people and Great Britain. My conscience is clear. I never voted for these vacuous c*nts and never will. The country is now infested with illegal immigrants and limp-wristed liberal types. I got fed up with hearing about globalisation and how inevitable it all is.

Britain just allowed the flood of Polish people even though it didn't have to. It was a spiteful and calculated move to drive down wages. I don't mind the Polish. They all seem fairly decent but that doesn't mean it's right to alienate the British unemployed. What annoys me is that in a relatively short period of time the country has lost its identity. Why would I want to endure illegal immigrant ex-soldiers from Somalia and the like? Why is everyone shocked when all the lawless immigrants kill and rape us? It's racist to dispute these issues because we have become useless pussies. We cannot even say we hate a religion in our own country! Why the hell did my grandfathers bother fighting in WW1 and 2? What a waste of time. It's ironic to remember that Hitler had a lot of respect for Britain. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair don't even have that respect.

How wide spread is this?

A quick search revealed lots of these scams:

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NPS/40698


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


NOTTINGHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


06/08/2009
............

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BTR/17661


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BURTON-ON-TRENT, STAFFORDSHIRE


18/01/2010
............................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CRY/67747


MEETS NAT MIN WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROI/72250


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROTHERHAM, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
..........................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CHL/65855


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


CHESTERFIELD, DERBYSHIRE


18/01/2010
...........................................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BAL/67828


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BARNSLEY, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
CROYDON, SURREY


25/01/2010
...................................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CVD/71725


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


SHEFFIELD, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROI/72250


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROTHERHAM, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CHL/65855


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


CHESTERFIELD, DERBYSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BAL/67828


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BARNSLEY, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: DCG/30621


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


DONCASTER, SOUTH YORKSHIRE.


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MHH/15262


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


MANSFIELD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: RET/24937


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


RETFORD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HUD/87506


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


HUDDERSFIELD, WEST YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MAC/50174


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


MACCLESFIELD, CHESHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: OLH/75310


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


OLDHAM, LANCASHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HAF/57244


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


HALIFAX, WEST YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LPP/43459


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LEEDS, WEST YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009


WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROC/63531


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROCHDALE, LANCASHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: FTS/131763


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


MANCHESTER, LANCASHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NPS/40698


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


NOTTINGHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BDC/129220


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


BRADFORD, WEST YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: SCN/11981


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


SCUNTHORPE, SOUTH HUMBERSIDE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LOS/32064


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LINCOLN, LINCOLNSHIRE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BTR/17661


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BURTON-ON-TRENT, STAFFORDSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NOR/32172


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: YOR/142611


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


YORK, NORTH YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: GNT/11459


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


GRANTHAM, LINCOLNSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BOL/99226


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BOLTON, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: SKP/32569


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


SKIPTON, NORTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HUW/34304


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


HULL, NORTH HUMBERSIDE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: WBA/26668


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


WIGAN, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MEL/22103


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


MELTON MOWBRAY, LEICESTERSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BCK/33771


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: PRS/112945


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


PRESTON, LANCASHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LCR/46340


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


LEICESTER, LEICESTERSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: GTT/24529


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


GRIMSBY, SOUTH HUMBERSIDE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: WSQ/123249


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LIVERPOOL, MERSEYSIDE

A picture tells 1000 words

See above, in effect graduate unemployment is even worse than we expected end of last year 40%+. These do not show up in the stats! as there has been a flight back to education. In that grads who cannot get work decide to go back into education instead. Anybody on JSA knows that if you do more than 15 hours a week you are not unemployed and therefore you fall out of the unemployment stats.

It's subtle but; (unemployment amongst those in education) + (those who are unemployed and not in education) should remain stable but it isn't. So those who are unemployed
are staying and joining education which lowers the figures.

You can see the flight to education , much more than previous recessions due to the lack of jobs. Adding in the move to part time work the Government should be seeing very low takes for
tax compared to what they are spending on tax credits and benefits.

However will it work?, in that these grads who go on for extra schooling will still leave with no experience and unfortunately it may give them a huge sense of entitlement. For the record when I graduated I had a sense of entitlement in that I'd worked at the same time as my studies and I thought now is the time for my reward.

Unfortunately I was wrong and after noticing <50 well paid graduate schemes for the entire country with everybody else at NMW or even less than that remember I started my graduate career on £5500 (only a bit more than I used to get working at Mc'ds in 1996 @ £2.15 an hour. Which dashed my optimism markedly.

Resolved!

In a forum I frequent somebody told me of the apprenticeship scam, it is a variation of the new deal scam.

For the new deal 50% of your pay is paid by the government, 50% by the employer, this means uber cheap employees, the crick is that if you perform well the person is kept on. The employer gets some sort of bonus for simply taking them on, what happens though is at the end of the year the person is let go, the positon vacant for a few weeks then another New Deal person is hired the employer gets cheap staff, a bonus etc the cycle continues. Although the person who did it has a years worth of work experience and reference to hand, although the usefulness of this is questionable as if you can hire somebody for 50% of the cost and get a bonus why hire somebody you need to pay fully?.

The scam is this:

Is it a scam however, [edited]or whatever, is taking on 55 at £100 a week, suspicious i'd say. I've just been offered the chance to take on a plumbing apprentice, government scheme, £1500 for me on accepting the youngster, a further £1000 for me after 12 weeks of employing the apprentice. If i pay £100 a week, and sack him at week 13, id be £1200 in pocket.

So there you have it, it effectively means it IS a scam, with 12 weeks work experience it also makes your CV look bad, as it looks as if you can't hack it even if you were a perfectly capable employee. This also says bigger things in that the National minimum wage doesn't actually exist in this country as there are methods to get round it. If people find it hard to make ends meet on NMW then how on earth are people going to get by on apprenticeship wages? of £2.71 a year.

In that yes government top ups are available but doesn't this mean tax payers are subsidising the wages of the low paid? , doesn't this distort and encourage wage fraud?.

In that two businesses A + B , if A hired somebody playing cricket on NMW ,and B hired somebody on an fake apprenticeship then surely B has a slight advantage. This advantage of which he can pass to his clients or take a bigger profit and reinvest, A is at a disadvantage so either continues as normal or plays the same game.

In the end the employees lose out, and again we have the Henry Ford problem, if nobody can afford your goods and services you'll go out of biz.

Oddly enough recessions encourage this in that if something is cheaper for the same thing people will buy it as it stretches their money further. However somebody else pays for the savings you make and longer term everybody pays. Those cheap £5 jeans you see in some supermarket? , somebody in China has taken the job of a British person for that.

I'm not saying British jobs for British people just a moment of consideration as to why things are the way that they are right now.

Revenge of the apprenticeship

As above they expect you to know everything already before starting, so how on earth is this an apprenticeship?

But it clearly isn't an apprenticeship, it's just a way of getting a position filled on the cheap.

Copy and pasted from the apprentices website:

All apprenticeships should conform to the following:

• An appropriate work-based qualification such as a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) at either Level 2 or Level 3;
• Key Skills qualifications, e.g. working in teams, problem-solving, communication and using new technology;
• A technical qualification such as a BTEC or City & Guilds (relevant to the specific Apprenticeship);
• Other qualifications or requirements as specified by the particular occupation.

Which this so called apprenticeship does not offer. It's a full-time job, there is no qualification being worked towards. The person that meets their specification already knows the job so in what sense are they serving an apprenticeship? It's just cynical exploitation.

Mind and boggles are thoughts which come to mind

More joke jobs

NMW or just above, in LONDON too, do they realise how expensive it is to live in London? on the £200 or so a week thats £800 GROSS before tax or £700 rents in London are close to £500 a month, leaving £200 to cover council tax, bills and food.

Before anybody says it commuting isn't exactly an option either with £1000 for a train ticket into London, this is ontop of rent costs as well. Admittedly if say somebody were living at home with their parents this MIGHT be worthy. However with great numbers of unemployed who have experience, the starter out junior type won't even get a look in.

young fear years of unemployment

Here

As they set out to find work, only half of young people feel their education has prepared them well for the jobs market, survey shows.


I think I know how they feel in that when I first graduated it took me 5 months to find my first role, it was poorly paid, I was exploited but in the end it was a huge relief, I wonder how the current generation feel in that I'm not sure that they will be so lucky. In that once you get over a certain threshold morale vanishes and those shiny certificates of your work lose their gleam to the graduates and potential applicants who graduated after you.

Why I am seriously considering leaving accountancy

There has been a trend I can't find the link for about graduates working in non related professions to their degrees.

I did a BA accountancy a long time ago, or at least it feels a long time ago. In that many people ask why are you thinking of leaving accountancy?. It is a good career path, this confuses my parents when they visit my flat now and again to bring me a parcel of food or something. (I have a terrible diet of Ramen I think it is trading money for health but hey at 9p per meal it is unbeatable for calorific value). In that my parents are stuck in old thinking, they never considered the aspects of globalisation and thus outsourcing.


Ironically to an accountant or ex accountant (I repent) it makes an awful lot of sense to me. It is from the training which conflicts with my own values system. Although oddly enough I do still apply for jobs here not that this has done me much good lately.

Accounting/back office financial work makes a lot more sense to outsource to me. In a way I'm surprised it took this long to get going.. but it could really turn into an avalanche of job outsourcing over the next few years.

Many of these companies have thousands upon thousands of people doing reconciliations, payroll, routine accounting work, and all sorts of accounting type positions. Go to any city in Britain and there is office building after office building full of people doing these types of things.

Its all done on computer nowadays so it doesn't make much difference if it is done in Manchester or Hyderabad. The difference is in Hyderabad you can get a very bright hard working person who is thrilled to work for £1 an hour.



Though there is another deeper reason other than outsourcing, that is the ethic of accounting companies, in that I was exploited heavily during my training, non moving wages costs of everything going up meant I was getting year on year pay cuts. The crick is this in that once you qualify you setup on your own and then it is YOUR turn to exploit the juniors and PQs. (part qualified)

Hold on there a second if I didn't like being treated badly and had to live like a bum for years till I got the ACCA letters after my name. Then quite simply why would I want others to be treated the same way?.

On top of this you may stand and attempt to buck the trend, except that other firms with lower morals and ethics do go on and exploit juniors and PQs, and can therefore lower their prices on the savings. My experience in accountancy was that you shift the price up even a little bit and clients leave.

I think this is indicative of a greater ennui in the UK as a whole as we only seem to care about the bottom line.

Cadbury's closes are we shocked no, the UK's industries are bought up jobs are gone but do we care? not much, as long as we get some kind of bargain to hell with the long term consequences. This was shown when Woolworths folded, in that people who went to the closing down sales complained it wasn't cheap enough.

job centre website is back

Sort of, in that digging through a few links the header page is back unfortunately it still links to the government portal website which again is frustrating and makes you jump through hoops that the old website never used to make you do.

The most depressing thing is

The most depressing thing is about all this is the feeling of helplessness, next to this is probably the fact that people who are under or unemployed suffer a feeling of confirmation bias. In that being unemployed is a depressing experience motivation can only last so long before it starts to crumble horribly.

In that you may spend half an hour an hour perhaps longer adjusting your CV, then typing out and spell checking then either emailing it to sending it via post to the supposed employer. That is IF the job exists in the first place, when quite often it does not (agencies are particularly guilty of this).

In that you spend all that time applying for the job doing all of the above. However the potential employer can’t take the time out to send a simple no email back. Granted there are two problems with this in that if it is a postal application then it would require them to post something back. Although many people will attach email addresses to their CVs and covering letters as a method of being in touch in more ways than one.

Also that there may well be a huge number of applicants to the job meaning replying simply isn’t feasible as they have other things to be doing.

Such as money making activities. 3 Workplaces ago I remember Trevor who worked in payroll for both the company itself and for a stack of clients. He also did the HR work filtering the work applications for potential new hires.

However here is where the confirmation bias comes in, in that people are already low in morale and not being worth a few seconds of somebody’s time confirms that they are unwanted or un-needed leading to a greater loss of morale and makes it harder to motivate and apply for jobs in the first place.

Way back in 2004 I remember one of the firms I applied for, he took the time to write back to me stating that there were no vacancies and he was very sorry. He did however write some advice for me and give me some hints. I put those into action and got my very first accounting job (the pay cheque a photocopy is on my wall to this day). This encouraged me and made me feel better, I wonder what employers have to gain from lower morale?.

This is of course not inclusive of several nasty return letters I received more than once from potential employers. One particular one from Stockport sent back a lengthy reply giving a sentence by sentence point by point of my CV and covering letter knocking each and every point. She had nothing positive to say and seemed to revel in great delight at belittling me.

So I suppose not getting replies sometimes is a good thing.

Bleak day as 1,600 UK job losses announced

Bleak day as 1,600 UK job losses announced


The UK employment industry took a knock today, with the announcement that over 1,600 jobs would be lost across the drugs, water, car and chocolate sectors. 
The biggest cuts hit a Cadbury factory in Somerdale, Somerset, which is to close with the loss of 400 jobs despite hopes that new owners Kraft would save it. 
Cadbury announced in 2007 that it planned to close Somerdale and transfer work to Poland with the loss of 500 jobs.

Around 100 workers have been made redundant but Kraft's ownership had offered hope that the remaining jobs could be saved.

However, those hopes were dashed when the US firm said it was "unrealistic" to reverse Cadbury's plans to shut the site and announced the factory would close by 2011.
Kraft, whose five-month battle for control of the confectioner was sealed earlier this month, had pledged to retain the plant.

But today it said Cadbury had already spent £100 million on building new facilities in Poland and most production would be transferred by the middle of this year.

Unite's national officer Jennie Formby, said: "It is with great anger that we heard today's announcement by Kraft that the Somerdale closure will go ahead as planned.

"Anger that Kraft deliberately misled many hundreds of decent men and women in Keynsham by saying that they would keep Somerdale open, despite Unite making very clear to them as early as September that this seemed impossible with the timeline for closure already seemingly set in stone.

"Anger that their thirst for public approval during the most unpopular takeover we've seen in recent times drove Kraft to ignore those warnings and instead choose to state repeatedly that the site would not close.

"This sends the worst possible message to the 6,000 other Cadbury workers in the UK and Ireland. It tells them that Kraft care little for their workers and have contempt for the trade union that represents them”.
Meanwhile, car giant Vauxhall said it would shed 154 administrative jobs in the UK on top of previously announced cuts of 369 at its Luton factory, which builds vans.

Welsh Water, which provides water and sanitation services to 1.2 million households in Wales and parts of England, said it would axe 300 jobs during the next five years in an attempt to reduce costs.
Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline announced plans to cut up to a third of jobs at its UK research and development site in Harlow, Essex, raising the threat of up to 380 job losses.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said of the job cuts announced today: "These job losses show the economy is still on the knife edge. City bonuses may be back and the economy is technically growing once again, but the downturn is far from over for the millions struggling to find work, forced to take work well below their capabilities or who fear for their jobs.

"The Government must resist calls to take the knife to public spending - which would cause further job losses and give us a double-dip recession."

Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB, said: "It is going to be a long, hard slog before the economy recovers and employment starts growing again.

"These job losses underline the need to keep the public sector buoyant until the economy is properly recovered”.

Do job centres still work?

Posted on 06 February 2010

A century ago the first labour exchanges opened to great acclaim. But despite the many advances, are their successors meeting their clients’ needs, asks Graham Snowdon

Jobcentres are a mixed blessing: you only attend one if you are out of work, and for many people they embody the frustration of applying for benefits or of trying to find new employment when jobs are rarer than hens’ teeth.

But on 1 February 1910, when the UK’s first 62 labour exchanges – the forerunners of today’s Jobcentre Plus network – opened their doors, interest and demand was huge. “Promising start everywhere” proclaimed the following day’s Manchester Guardian with reports of hundreds of people queueing outside offices.

With situations vacant ranging from piano regulators to picture frame gilders,­ labour exchanges brought new order to the hitherto chaotic process of finding work. “Before then, people would have found work through word of mouth and by visiting factories,” says Dr Ian Gazeley, senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Sussex. “There were some rudimentary public works schemes but for most, the only way to get a job was to go directly to the employer.”

Offices had separate rooms for men, women, employers and children and, as Winston Churchill – then president of the board of trade in the Asquith Liberal government – noted, each was painted green: “the colour of hope”, he said after visiting the Hackney labour exchange on its opening day.

Jobcentre Plus today has 750 offices and about 78,000 employees offering an integrated service incorporating benefits and employment search. Stepping inside is like walking into the foyer of an ultra-modern bank. Where once there were partitions and noticeboards with job vacancies on cards, now there are touch-screen “job points” and personal advisers to hand.

“We’ve seen huge changes in the service and how it helps people in the past 100 years, even in the past 10 and five years,” Yvette Cooper, work and pensions secretary, said at a new exhibition about labour exchanges in Hackney this week. “Getting away from the culture of the Full Monty and the benefit screens has been important.”

Loss of motivation

On the face of it, the service has never been so joined up. Yet as they turn 100, can jobcentres really still claim to be meeting the needs of the people they now call their “customers”? Figures released this week by the Liberal Democrats, showing more than 210,000 people seeking work in the construction industry but just 302 such vacancies available on Jobcentre Plus’s website, seem to embody the problem.

Outside the jobcentre in Hackney, opinion is mixed. Darren, aged 29, is an unemployed security guard who has been using the service on and off for about 12 years. “I’ve never found one job through the jobcentre,” he says. “I’ve been sent on a lot of courses, but when you come in here, use the job points and make a phone call, nine out of 10 times they’ve all gone. You lose motivation to keep coming back. I’ve got more jobs from going to agencies.”

Cassandra, a recent psychology graduate, has been looking for jobs for a year and is now focusing on temping work rather than anything related to her degree. “It’s not working out very well,” she says. “When I send out my CV no one ever gets back in touch.”

She wants Jobcentre Plus to help make introductions for her with potential employers: “When you send emails you don’t get any feedback, so you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

Not everyone is down on the jobcentre, though. Louise, a 27-year-old chef, has only been visiting it for a few months but her impressions are largely positive. “I think they’re pretty good,” she says. “I haven’t signed on before, so I’ve got nothing to compare it with.” She admits she had to ask about training and that there seemed like plenty of work on the job machines, “but it’s just not necessarily what I’m after”.

Yet still the perception remains that Jobcentre Plus is not geared to the needs of many people who have lost their jobs in this recession. Several readers commenting on a recent Guardian website article about a day in the life of a jobcentre were scathing.

“Demoralising and frustrating,” commented sansucre, referring (coincidentally) to the Hackney jobcentre. “The staff are badly informed, and just don’t care.” “The main problem seems to be that the whole system is geared towards finding low/unskilled work,” posted TheGraduate.

It’s a view shared by 54-year-old Steve Wood from Southampton, who spent 38 years working in the semiconductor industry before it collapsed last year. “The job went, the company went, and so did the business from Europe,” he recalls. Jobcentre Plus, he says, has been “a dead loss”, although he is quick to support the staff: “They do a great job for what they were set up for, which is blue-collar workers. For white-collar workers, basically they didn’t have a clue.”

Hoping to reinvent himself as a web designer, Wood sent off 220 job applications in six months and received only one interview offer. Eventually he tried Jobcentre Plus after hearing about government initiatives to help unemployed people like himself. “But they didn’t know anything about it. There was no real help at all.”

Exasperated and in need of a project, Woods set up the website Whitecollarunemployed.co.uk, aiming to share information with people in a similar predicament. It has given him practical experience and led him to some interesting contacts, but his jobseeker’s allowance, which is only paid for the first six months, has now stopped and the future is uncertain. “I’m still not earning enough to pay my bills,” he says.

Recruitment issues

It’s not just those looking for work that feel let down by jobcentres, either. Research conducted last year by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) showed fewer than one in five of its members were using Jobcentre Plus to recruit. The FSB’s national chairman, John Wright, claims his members are ignored by a service that appears to offer them precious little for the £3.36bn Jobcentre Plus spends each year. “We are concerned the lion’s share of funding goes to large companies and multinationals,” he says.

But Graham Houghton, Jobcentre Plus’s district manager for the City and East London area, insists such criticism is unfounded. “It’s simply not true,” he says. “The bulk of our vacancies are for smaller local businesses. We have account managers who go out and visit small businesses to help them with their recruitment needs. Maybe there’s an issue in getting small businesses to come to us more, but those that work with us are overwhelmingly satisfied.”

While admitting there are problems with Jobcentre Plus, Richard Exell, a senior policy officer at the TUC, also feels they get a lot of unwarranted negative publicity. “The service suffered a series of cuts a few years ago,” he points out. “But the fact is there has been a recession and there aren’t many jobs around, and that’s not Jobcentre Plus’s fault. There are far fewer horror stories now than in the past.” So are we asking too much from jobcentres now? Is it unfair to expect staff to be consistently empathetic and knowledgeable? Are we expecting them to magic jobs out of nowhere?

Seen in the context of Britain’s 19th-century poor laws, by which the impoverished unemployed would end up in the workhouses, Churchill’s labour exchanges represented a radical shift in thinking. William Beveridge, best known as an architect of the post-war welfare state, was a driving force behind the plans. “The labour department at the Board of Trade at the time was quite forward-looking,” says Gazeley. With the passing of the 1911 National Insurance Act, benefit payments followed soon after.

Labour exchanges were eventually renamed employment exchanges but their function remained largely unaltered until 1973, when the first jobcentres opened. Steve Gill, now Jobcentre Plus’s external relations manager for Surrey and Sussex, worked through the transition. “The old employment exchanges were like backstreet offices, a bit grim,” he recalls. “We used to interview people in cubicles and there were enormous queues, often out of the door.” All the jobs were simply kept in a drawer. “You would just offer them to people who asked if there were any jobs.”

Benefits were paid in cash, using a system leaving something to be desired by today’s standards. “We’d put the money in a bag and wrap it up in string, then seal it with sealing wax,” Gill says. “Each member of staff used to have a crown with a number. You stamped your crown on the ceiling wax, so when you came in the next morning, you could tell if the seal had been broken.”

How times have changed. Last week, Cooper set out a broad future vision for Jobcentre Plus in which more information and services will be made available to people online, and predicted it would soon reach out to those already in work, “to help people progress and rise up the career ladder”.

For those in need of inspiration, it could be worth bearing in mind that jobcentres are countercyclical employers. “Because of the unemployment situation, we are recruiting,” points out Houghton. “We’re now hiring a lot of good people who are enabling us to do a lot of good things.

“Probably about 60 or 70 people who have joined me over the past few months are ex-financial services people, who have experience of having been made redundant and who have experience of Jobcentre Plus services.”

Perhaps something small but good has come of the credit crunch after all.

A brief history of jobcentres

1908 Winston Churchill appointed president of the board of trade; draws up plans for labour exchanges

1909 Parliament passes act to launch the labour exchange

1910 In February the first 62 labour exchanges are opened

1916 The ministry of labour is formed

1945 Founding of welfare state

1973 Jobcentre network opens

1975 Sex Discrimination Act bans sex discrimination

1986 New Job Training Scheme and Restart interviews introduced

1987 Jobcentres become part of Department of Employment, operating alongside benefits offices

1996 Unemployment benefit and income support merge to become jobseeker’s allowance

1997 New Deal programmes give people on benefits extra help to find work, with training and career advice

2001 Department for Work and Pensions formed

2002 Jobcentre becomes Jobcentre Plus

• Job hunting
• Work & careers
• Unemployment and employment statistics

Some minor good news

Slavery permitted illegal

William Wilberforce would be happy at last,

'Unpaid Internships Deemed Illegal .....

As unemployment figures for16 - 24 year olds rise to one-in-five an Employment Tribunal has ruled that workers employed on an expenses-only basis are entitled to payment at least in line with the national minimum wage, in addition to payment for the holiday they accrue. The decision emphasises that creative industry employers are not excluded from obligations under the national minimum wage regulations.

HMRC, are reported very shortly to be issuing guidelines recognising that unpaid internships are illegal and qualify for the minimum wage. '

I think unpaid internships are now illegal in the UK (though not entirely sure as everything was a bit up in the air last time I looked, after the tribunal ruling mentioned above) - they have been in the US for quite a while - I suggest she contacts HMRC, then shops her ex-employer - if they have indeed broken the law.

So why not look for other jobs

15 miles of Manchester and this morning these are all the jobs that I could find:

This is NOT a narrow search it is the widest possible search parameters possible on the jobs website, 15 miles of my location, any time any hours, temp or perm or contract. The only restriction was on today's jobs in that prior jobs for Saturday (sunday is always a quiet day) .However if I did that, that would be double counting of jobs for each day. So today's score is

6

An awful lot of people say to me on forums why not just apply outside accountancy? as there are loads of jobs outside accountancy, the problem is there aren't as above. Of the above I can probably do ONE of those jobs as they all require qualification, certification of somekind and most importantly experience of that job. All of those qualifications and certifications cost money, money I don't have in effect another tax as they are the sort of certifications that nobody fails hand over your money and you get the certificate.

This also leads to a bigger problem in that if I do not mention accountancy suddenly there is a 7 year hole in my CV 8 actually. In that it took me 3 years to graduate (although I worked as a chef in the meantime) and I have just under 4 years experience and 1 year underemployed.

How am I supposed to explain the massive gap in my CV, who will I get to give me references? I'm pretty sure high school and 6th form college don't remember me, in fact the staff who did teach me even at university which is my most recent experience of education have left or retired.

Reed website goes down

Must be due to the incredible number of jobs on there right

The previous post

Just to compare incase anybody comments though that it rather unlikely given that I have no followers or anything like that.

But I did check all of the jobs on January 29th within a 15 mile radius of Manchester any pay any hours. There were 23 Jobs posted for 29/01/2010, you can check it out yourself at the government's job seeker website.

23 jobs posted per day annualise that to a rough estimate of:

365 - Weekends (105) = 260 days of normal posting of jobs

260 * 25 jobs posted (just to be generous I've given them 25 not 23 jobs) = 6500 jobs. Which quite frankly is awful, however it gets worse, look at some of the jobs they are temp jobs and some of them do not exist. A big reason why agencies put jobs on the government website is that it costs NOTHING it is free. So much like plentyoffish.com anybody can put up job adverts.

Even in good times, better times like 2007 and 2008 there were many fake jobs posted about 25%, so the huge figure of 6500 should be closer to 4875 jobs for a city of 2 million.

Somehow the get a job you lazy bum type comments won't wash as there are simply no jobs for people to go to.

Lots of jobs today

10.05AM 30 January 2010, ALL jobs within the last 24 hours within a 15 mile radius of Manchester, ONE job...

I'll admit its a Saturday which is traditionally a low ebb for jobs but ONE job out of a population of 2 million!

Oh dear..

As I suspected

Yes there are jobs on the new government job seeker website, wait there is something wrong with this, 3 yes THREE jobs in the entire UK and they were posted about 4 months ago.


The other problem is that this new website which isn't new, the government culling 86% of its websites is a lie as the underlying functionality is still there and thus no real cuts only the appearance of cuts.

Also that there is MUCH more limited functionality on this site. It would take 90 seconds to check for ALL jobs in my area which could be defined as 5-10-15-up to 100 miles, now it takes longer and restricts your area of searching. Instead of 5-100 miles of your current location it instead gives you the choice of region and 1-15 miles distance within this region.