Friday 23 August 2013

Is anyone surprised?

This story appeared today on the BBC news website - "Swansea firm frustrated at system after job advert".  While the employer in Swansea was frustrated, few "job-seekers" will be surprised.  Why were people from as far away as Glasgow and Peterborough applying for warehouse jobs in Swansea?  The account doesn't mention that the jobs were on UJM, but we can assume that they were.  Perhaps they were coming up as local jobs, even to those many miles away, because that's what happens.  Certainly, of the 100 applicants many would simply be applying because they had to, with no intention of moving from, say, Glasgow, in order to take the job.  The story suggests that there were no more unemployed people in Swansea, which is unlikely.  We are not told anything about the jobs or the pay.  Nor are we told whether the people she short-listed were then told that they couldn't claim the costs of attending the interview.  A spokesperson for the DWP (must be a woman, or they wouldn't have used that term) said the usual things about "tough new penalties" for those failing to turn up for interviews.
A curious thing about this story is that it assumes that it's the jobcentres which are responsible, when it's more likely to be Work Programme providers.  But one thing you can be certain of - the system of forcing people to apply for a quota of jobs won't change.

25 comments:

  1. This was being discussed on BBC R5L this morning. Naturally I wanted to get a call in to put my point across but was alas not chosen.

    I wanted to point out the fact that many vacancies are fictitious. And that JCP+ staff were just taking part in a box ticking exercise being overly concerned with the numbers of jobs applied for rather than the quality and nature of them.

    Talking of the WP, Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA (Employment Related Services Ass.) was on the same program. Why she was asked to take part is beyond me as she speaks up for private providers such as A4e, G4s, Ingeus, etc., not JCP+.

    I was itching to get on the air also to remind Ms McHugh that as bad as JCP+ is, the WP's performance is even worse.

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  2. I actually applied for that position and only live 8 miles away,I have warehouse experience(Amazon) and applied using UJM followed up by a spec letter, never heard a peep out of them. I was short listed by another company(UJM) but when I approached the WP about travel,it was a local job,but the head office was out of town,all of a sudden nobody was in the office to authorize this.

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  3. What surprises me is that a firm in Swansea were even taking applications from people in Peterborough and Glasgow seriously. I spent years on the dole applying for jobs in Cardiff, around 30 miles away from me in the eastern Valleys, simply because there wasn't anything any nearer and, of course, I had my quota to fill. I would have done the commute until I could have found digs in town, and yet I never had even one interview. Then I tried experimenting. Lots of jobs are applied for by email these days, so I started sending in my CV with a (fake) Cardiff address on it, and all of a sudden started getting interviews, so the employers were obviously only interested in local staff, which is fair enough. It didn't get me a job - I only got in with my current firm because they're sufficiently desperate for staff not to be too picky about all the usual humbug, but then I'm desperate enough to put up them so it works both ways...

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  4. Sick of the Work Programme23 August 2013 at 12:25

    An article about this also appeared in today's Daily Mail. It was most disheartening, although unfortunately not surprising, to see the number of comments where people had said things along the lines of 'if they won't take any job, stop their benefits.' The people who said such things hadn't considered that, if someone from Glasgow or Peterborough was applying for an £8 an hour job in Swansea, it was highly likely that they were doing it under pressure from the Jobcentre or Work Programme provider to apply for anything, even if it wasn't suitable.

    I myself have applied for jobs I do not really want. That is not to say that I do not want a job at all (contrary to the popular stereotype of people on JSA), but that I know full well that it would not be economically viable for me to travel 50+ miles to work to do a minimum wage job. I also would not be able to afford to move unless it was for a job with a good salary. However, when I am sitting there at A4e's jobsearch sessions for a couple of hours, I do end up applying for such jobs, as I am expected to fill in my jobsearch sheet showing that I have actually applied for jobs, whether or not there are any suitable in my local area. I am sure that there must be many employers out there who are getting very frustrated by the increasing number of applications and speculative enquiries from jobseekers who do not have suitable qualifications or experience.

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  5. This afternoon I telephoned an employment agency about a job that I'd seen posted on the Universal Jobmatch. I was told that the vacancy had been filled three weeks before and the jobcentre should have removed it from the jobmatch site.

    I regularly see jobs I have already applied for being re-posted with different Job IDs. Positions are posted as being live, but the employers own website states that the jobs do not exist.

    Then there are literally hundreds of positions listed under CV Warehouse, Monster and other job sits that do not actually state who the employer is. This means you can't check to see if the job is real.

    This is blatantly political - the DWP is posting fake job ads so that the government can claim there are more job vacancies than there really are.

    This is the sort of thing I used to read about happening in Russia under the Communists.

    Nothing is going to change: the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind.

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    Replies
    1. I totally agree with your comments, I am in the same boat as you, I find it utterly soul destroying.

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  6. I have to admit I have applied for jobs I think I've probably no chance of getting, but then you never know, that might be the one that decides to give me a chance. The job ctre does say I have to apply for 5 jobs a week, but doesn't say 5 jobs that I can actually do or get, or get to.

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  7. This story appears to be from August 2012, it's almost as if the dwp were scraping the barrel and they didn't notice the year!

    http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/100-applicants-job-showed-start-work/story-19701638-detail/story.html

    Here it says: (wish I could comment there)
    "The ad went live at 2pm and at 3pm we took it off because the phone hadn’t stopped ringing and we’d had email and written applications too."

    That's maybe why there weren't many from Swansea, they didn't get a chance! 100s of applications for an entry level job in the 1st few hours is quite common.

    As a businesswoman she doesn't seem to know a lot about how the labour market works these days.

    She also runs TheDisabledShop
    https://twitter.com/TheDisabledShop

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  8. Being Post Work Programme and signing on in Leeds, my Jobcentre Advisor has informed me that I must spend five hours per day actively seeking employment.

    I have an account on the Universal Jobmatch website, and have to simply apply for jobs anywhere in the UK to meet my targets. I do initiate a local (within 20 miles) job search, but the majority of jobs that appear are not in Leeds. Very peculiar.

    Today I have applied for jobs in Leeds, Doncaster, Sheffiels, St. Albans, Devon and Cornwall. Oh, and many in London. IDS is responsible for ensuring jpbseekers using the Universal Jobmatch must apply for jpbs hundreds pf miles away.

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    1. Same here,after sorting through the obvious scams,commission only jobs,jobs that have been on for over a year,apprentice only and then sorting through the ones that are "Local" but are hundreds of miles away,their are only a handful left,fair play the Adviser at JCP admits that this is the case,but there are those pesky boxes to be ticked!

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    2. Hello, forgive my ignorance as I am fortunate to be in work, but my undestanding was you have to be prepared to travel to and from work. The journey time 3 hours there and back? You also need to have the ability to get there - public transport (if needed) must cover the area. Why must people apply for jobs they would not get seems totally wrong. I take my hat off to those who have to do this just because of possible sanctions. Total Shame.

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    3. Same here,but a problem,the JCP has 2 computers but they do not work,the reply I had was use your own.I brought to their attention that they must provide the facilities in order for me to complete the tasks that they require,a confused look,to bring it down to an example that they understood,I asked if they wanted me to dig a ditch,would they not provide me with a shovel? The adviser called over the Manager and asked if I was abusive,I was asked to leave!

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  9. Apologies for the spelling mistakes on my previous post. I made it via smartphone and its easy to type incorrectly on such a device.

    The Universal Jobmatch website is designed to facilitate job applications for all over the UK. The Conservative's believe that jobseekers should be applying for available jobs wherever they may be.

    This is fine with me. As long as the DWP funds my transport to job interviews to places such as Cardiff, which is a location for a job on my recommended jobs section of the UJ.

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  10. Employers advertising vacancies with the jobcentre are now getting swamped by applications because of the threat of sanctions.

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  11. One thing I have noticed about UJ recently is that more and more jobs are being advertised as apply by email only i.e. not via the one click apply. I think this is because many are getting swamped by cv's.

    This system is clearly not working and has been designed solely to give the impression that the gov't are doing something when in reality they couldn't give a toss.

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    1. I've noticed that too. Just to cover myself, if there is a job with no apply button I take a screen shot first, then manually type in "no apply button" and save the image, before I click out of the job.

      Just in case they try to sanction me for not applying for a job on UJ...

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    2. What I usually do if that situation comes up is enter the basic details (company name, location, job title and source of vacancy) in the "Activity History" section, beginning each entry with "JOB APPLICATION". (This also comes in handy when preparing my fortnightly jobsearch logs as I don't have to worry about reams of letters. The information's all there for you.

      Mind you, when I sign on each fortnight, the staff still ask for the printouts of my jobsearch diary.

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  12. DWP know, and have done for years, that employers dislike JCP (and contracted-out provision) for the reasons alluded to in posts above and in the article (albeit in a typically BBC scrounger-bashing way).

    They're in a difficult position - JCP staff out in the districts and do try to work sensibly with employers, but the policy direction from Westminster mitigates against this. JCP (plus outsourced provision) should be the first port of call for £8ph jobs, but they're doing their best to exclude themselves from the market.

    If I was a more paranoid person, I'd think that forcing state-funded employment services to behave in a way that made them unattractive as a means of filling vacancies for run of the mill jobs like these as part of a supply side fix-up.

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    1. Don't you think that's a little bit too subtle for IDS and his chums?

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    2. A bit subtle for IDS maybe - even his friends wouldn't say that he's particularly subtle, or even noticeably able - his position owes more to his self-promotion as a morally sound progressive thinker, rather than any suspicion of competence or nuanced thought.

      There are others though who are perfectly capable of demolishing the reputation of every public (or quasi-public, in our outsourced age) service with the aim of either flogging it or closing it entirely. One can see it every day - Hunt spending most of his time campaigning against an organisation he's technically responsible for whilst the party openly cosies up to the vultures who'll pick over the corpse; Grayling busily transforming rehabilitation in the same way a foggy mountainside 'transforms' a jet - and so on...

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  13. As many of us could smell a rat or two with this story, I've just had another look.

    In this 'Financial News' article from a just few days before the story, she actually says:
    "We have got a following and we are expanding fast, but there is a threat with the amount of money they can spend on things like marketing."
    this should get past the wall http://tinyurl.com/kjmcd3f

    So I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with jobs/benefits/scroungers, - that was just a tag to get free advertising/marketing for the company.

    I was just going to link to this bloke because I know he counts and archives UJM postings, and see he's already blogged on this very story and come to the same conclusion!
    http://blog.zois.co.uk/

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  14. It's clearly a marketing, The silly season is full of no-mark companies plugging implausible stories, and one that plays to a few popular preconceptions (claimants are solely interested in keeping their benefits, JCP is incompetent, honest companies can't recruit decent staff and so on) is pretty much guaranteed to run at this time of year.

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  15. Ok, touchy subjec maybet. Having watched Channel 4's "Benefits Britain 1949" it seems to me the system in place the was fairer - it would have given me an opportunity to show if I have the potential to work. It also impossed penanalties, what do others think then? Or have you all dismissed this as "another" of those dumbed down programmes. Thank you.

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    1. I suspect a lot, like me, haven't watched it, having had our fill of such programmes. I can go back to the 1960s on personal experience, and I would welcome a serious programme which sought to trace the history and development of the welfare system. This wasn't it. Did it show how hated means-testing was, and why? Did it show, crucially, that in 1949 there was a much greater sense of society, of genuine decency towards the poorest and the determination to build a better country? From what you've said, apparently not.

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    2. Everybody has the opportunity to show 'the potential for work' via the usual routes - e.g. applying for a job, being interviewed, being offered a job and so on. The main problem is that the 1949 benefit system was predicated on full employment - something we haven't had for almost 40 years. The reality now is that a significant number of people are effectively excluded from the job market for a number of reasons - including reasons as circumstantial as living in the wrong part of the country.

      As for the programme - it was pretty appalling and factually dubious in many respects. Just more poverty porn - I don't know what's going on with Channel 4 (well, actually I do - they know that this sort of programme delivers ratings and controversy) but they're doing the unfortunate of this country a great disservice and aiding and abetting the government as it wages war against most of the public.

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