Mistreated at job centre - filing a complaint.

Lb86

red_devil wrote: »

jsa is a right if you are unemployed. You are by law entitled to money to live on otherwise there would be chaos and lots more stealing etc. If prisoners can be fed andwatered them im damn sure law abiding citizens should be entitled to money.

What utter rubbish ,Jobseekers Allowance is a right if you are unemployed and SEEKING employment not unemployed and doing diddly squat. Which is why your benefit can be stopped if you are not actively seeking, making yourself unavailable for work or refusing employment.

The lady in the JCP should not have treat you like that I would just reccomend having a more in depth and honest jobsearch next time. No point lying it could end up worse for you in the long run. I can understand why you came away upset/

SilverFoxe

Nice first post.

dugdale_2

Heart Shaped Diamond
I read your post yesterday evening but due to the “feeding frenzy” of some of the MSE sharks thought I’d wait a while before I reply to you. Quite a long post so I’ll apologize in advance.
As you’re claiming JSA it’s your responsibility to provide evidence that you’re actively seeking work. I always tell my customers (not claimants or clients but customers) to log down everything that they do to look for the first two weeks or so. When I next see the customer we go through the log together and often it makes for very miserable reading. I then remind my customer of what I expect in the way of job seeking and warn them of the consequences if they’re deemed to be not actively seeking employment.
It would appear to me that this is exactly what happened on your visit to the Jobcentre, however my approach would have been slightly different. I want you to find a job, I want you to stop claiming JSA, I don’t want you to have your benefit sanctioned so I would have used the time we had together to discuss what steps you would take to find work over the following two weeks. I’d make suggestions about possible avenues that you might wish to investigate and endeavour to allow you to leave the jobcentre feeling slightly more positive about yourself than when you entered.
What’s happened between you and the lady in the Jobcentre is now in the past, it can’t be changed so let’s move on and try to get you closer to work.
From what you’ve posted you’re 19 years of age, are currently having a break from college, have no previous work experience and have low self esteem plus you’re struggling to find employers who will give you a chance due to lack of experience. You don’t have a clear job goal but have considered retail and admin positions. You’ve got a CV but aren’t managing to get it read by the people who do the hiring.
Let me tell you that I see people in a similar situation to you every day and quite a few of these people find work, if they can do it so can you.
If I was your adviser I’d want to ensure that your CV was as good as it could be, I’d recommend that you had it looked at by one of our 3rd party providers who specialise in that field. I’d then suggest that you bought a load of A4 envelopes and some sticky labels (if you’ve got a printer at home). We’d then devise a plan where you would target a particular type of employer (perhaps retail first) and fine tweak your CV for that market, we’d write a good covering letter and put that in the envelope with your CV. I would then ask you to either print a label or hand write on the envelope something like The manager XXXXXX store. I’d then ask you to visit the selected stores and ask to speak to the manager. If he or she was available I’d get you to introduce yourself and ask the manager if there were any vacancies, if yes you’d mention that you’d like to apply and hand your CV over, if there were no vacancies you would then ask the manager if they would like to keep your CV on record as you hand the envelope over. If when you enter the store you’re told that the manager isn’t available ask if the envelope could be passed to the manager later, don’t mention that you’re looking for a job as you want your CV to end up in the managers hand. Of course you would record every shop that you handed a CV into on your job log for the jobcentre. If I was your adviser and you told me that you’d done the above I would have no reason to doubt that you were actively seeking work. I also like it when customers tell me that they want to improve their current skills and ask me where they can go for free IT training (such as ECDL) as it makes me think that they’re trying to make themselves more employable.
If I was your adviser I'd also be considering using advisers discretion to fast track you to stage 3 of your claim so you are eligible for future jobs fund vacancies, (I presume that these are available North of the border). These positions are real jobs that last for 6 months, pay minimum wage unfortunately but would give you the experience that you are currently lacking plus references which might come in handy later. Why don't you ask for an appointment with your adviser and discuss this - again it would prove that you're serious about looking for work.

That's enough from me as I've been working all day as an 18 - 24 adviser and should learn to switch off when I finish work.

FATBALLZ

Do not waste time you should be using to seek work arsing about making complaints about some job centre drone. The job centre drones have a terrible repetitive job dealing with people who come from the sewers of society, the absolute filth of the general public. It's no surprise that dealing with these sorts of people all day causes them to lose their 'customer service' skills.

Unfortunately for decent people they sometimes have to enter this environment, however your goal should be to do the minimum possible to pass the JC checks, and then use the rest of your time productively seeking work. The JC staff will not give you any meaningful help - they are merely bodies employed to check boxes, they have neither the motivation nor the know-how to get people into work.

The best way to show your dissatisfaction with the JC system is to get a job and no longer be a part of it.

patman99

If you know how to use it, your jobcentre is a useful weapon in your job-hunting arsenal. You can use their terminals to search for work. Book appointments with the likes of 'Dugdale' and 'Busy mom' (both JCP employees) and a 100 and 1 other things.

DVardysShadow

Freddie_Snowbits wrote: »

... Me, I get up and earn what I am worth every day

Freddie does not even need to get out of bed, I wouldn't have paid him any less for his contribution to this site if I had thought he was posting from his bed.

dmg24

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Freddie does not even need to get out of bed, I wouldn't have paid him any less for his contribution to this site if I had thought he was posting from his bed.

That doesn't make sense.

danothy

dmg24 wrote: »

That doesn't make sense.

Actually it does ... which is why it's brilliant

Bamber19

red_devil wrote: »

my jc told me to apply for 3 jobs a week dont they realise everyone else will be applying too?????

What is the point here? that if there are other applicants for a job then there's no point in applying? I appreciate that the more people you are up against the less chance it may appear of getting the job, but someone has to get the job, if you're the best candidate it doesn't matter how many people you beat, just that you beat them. If you've nothing else to do i'd say it's worth taking the 20 minutes to fill in a form and have a chance at the job than not fill in the form and have zero chance (I say 20 minutes because so many application forms are the same or have the same type of questions that your answers are likely to just be a copy/paste job.)

If you don't buy a ticket you can't win the raffle

Savvybunny2009 wrote: »

In my experience, you go there, are kept waiting an hour or so whilst they chat, sip their coffees and make it very clear that they are catching up on the latest episode of their favourite soap opera gossip when they could actually be helping with the signings.

Whilst an hour may be a vast exaggeration i agree with the sentiment. I worked in a job centre some time ago and as a young male at the time didn't have any interest in the middle aged office gossip or politics but I found I spent a lot of time approaching people to ask why they were in/ how we could help as no-one else was doing so and 3 or 4 would be huddled round a desk discussing what someone from another local office had been saying about Claire on the 2nd floor. I recently had a few days off work and took a friend round some contacts (went in to have a word then introduced friend to get his name known there and associated with me) and the day culminated in him having to sign on. I went in with him and seen nothing had changed (It was a different office from where I worked though) He was in in plenty of time, it was clear the staff could see him and knew he was in, yet 4 of them were simply standing around behind one desk ignoring him and munching pringles.

The great annoyance for me was that as we approached lunchtime we'd often be very busy as there was catching up to be done and the suggestion of not getting to leave for lunch bang on your usual time was akin to blasphemy, so there would be this mad rush where my colleagues would repeatedly reference the mad rush and say how much we were running behind. I'm not shy about voicing an opinion and I wasn't needing to make friends given the job was to fill the gap between university and an existing start date for my "career" job so would tell them that the obvious reason for this was the number of people they attended to late because of their inane gossip, this of course fell on deaf ears coming from the new guy and the know it all graduate and there's no point in voicing the opinion higher up the scale because the majority of the managers have no management skills and are simply the ordinary staff who have been there long enough to have picked up a few half true competency answers (which is the route to greatness at JCP)

lexilex wrote: »

Every single day I get up at 7am, and spend all day until 6pm looking for work, refreshing all the job sites, applying for whatever I can, sending off my CV, sending speculative letters, contacting companies. In the three months I have been out of work I have had 1 interview for a job I did not get it.

Unless you are looking for work, you have no idea how hard it is at the moment.

The fact that you're doing all this and have only had 1 interview surely is closer to justifying the attitude of some on here, in that they are criticising someone who is basically doing the bare minimum, or not much above that, and complainigna bout beign called out on it. If someone making masses of effort is having trouble then someone doing a lot less is not likely to have much success. To the Opening poster don't take that too harshly, I know it sounds so but i recognise there is a difficulty in finding a job for the first time and that sometimes no-one tells you how to go about it, the best ways to approach different types of employer, that in some sectors you will rarely see posts advertised but visiting employers will show that they usually have some slots you can fit into, even on a trial basis. I suspect 2 things about the staff member you talked with from your post, firstly that she's had a real lazy layabout in not too long before you and has let that spill over into her time with you, which is wrong, and secondly, and it ties in with the idea that first time jobseekers sometimes don't really know how to find work effectively, that she is simply trying to get you to approach more employers off your own back, albeit berating someone to tears isn't the best way to do this.

The outlook that annoys me on here are the people who make excuses not to apply to jobs. If you're an engineer don't apply for a job as a solicitor, ok, that makes sense, but there are people that talk themselves out of applying to a job because "experience is desireable" or because they don't 100% fit the personal specifications. It annoys recruiters to get people who are nothing like what they're looking for but they're generally quite happy to get applications from people who fit parts of the role, not all, but can be trained up and when it comes to the lower paid, menial and labour jobs, any request for experience usually serves only to put off people who aren't really interested rather than it being a genuine requirement.

CCFC_80

Incyder wrote: »

Problem was, he rang the jc and told them what I'd said. They then said I'd made myself unemployable and suspended my dole for 6 months. Luckily I had stashed a few K away for such hard times so I was ok, but it dawned on me that really, my dole days were over, at least as I knew them.

So then not only were you milking the system for 8 years, you were also committing benefit fraud as well plus your mentioned sidelines. The minimum amount then for savings before any sanctions applied after your CB JSA ran out would have been 3k. Is it not surprising they are being extra tough on claimants now ?