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Just another WordPress.com weblog « Grads looking for a new job, order a new 40,500 job centre plus vacancies reporte » 40,500 Job centre plus vacancies South East reported June 10

By careerconnect

South East development Agency reported news of 3 claimants per job instead of 5 claimants per job at the same time last year, good news, but are these vacancies really all they are cracked up to be?

In my experience previously working in an economically deprived area in the North East on employment initiatives, I often found a large number of people looking to join my employment training programme, were of little or no work experience but were looking for a training programme different to those that were ran by Job Centre Plus and were mandatory programmes.

A training session that was aiming to recognise peoples potential and draw out the skills that these people clearly had but no-one had ever taken notice of, so when we had finally come to a breakthrough and improved confidence issues with our clients, the tedious and difficult task was to job search, the first port of call was Job Centre Plus vacancies.

Granted we found some great vacancies but alot were unsuitable for the clients we had, for reasons that affected their financial situation such as:

An advisor referred a long term unemployed resident to 3 jobs that you needed a car for (the client did not have a car nor a driving licence)

Numerous jobs listed as temporary with no idea of how long, which could really upset the flow of benefits and causing people to become financially distressed and unable to put food on the table!

Jobs advertised at Zero hour contracts’, what good is that for someone who needs to build stability?

Commission only jobs, again no financial stability!

Jobs requiring some sort of certificate that needs to be paid for, however, this for someone who is unemployed, is at the discretion of the advisor so the training needed may not be paid for!

What I am trying to say is that there are massive flaws in the system and I feel although there are a lot of jobs out there, a good percentage are not suitable for claimants who have barriers to work or have been white collar workers, there needs to be more done to meet the needs of the client, which in turn will help them to become job ready’ for jobs they are likely to sustain in, and not pushed in to jobs just to achieve service level agreements.

I have helped so many people find sustainable work through encouragement, recognising potential and motivational methods, some of these people were long term unemployed, often 10 years plus and from domestic violence backgrounds, violent families, ex offenders and drug related problems, the list goes on!

I think time is the key, the right advisors who have a passion for helping people turn their life around and more funding for training, up-skilling and educating employers!  But I feel that I could be holding my breath, in the meantime I will keep providing a good careers service to my customers and making a small but significant difference to the people I come across.

Michelle

www.career-connect.co.uk

Professional cv writer, career counsellor and employment advisor

This entry was posted on July 25, 2010 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply

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