Very Rude Job Centre Staff

scooby088

mickyrod wrote: »

So what ever happened to career choice? My daughter has previously won a National and regional Travel and Tourism award for salesperson of the year! Should she really be expected to give this all up within 2 weeks of finding herself made redundant?

Would you expect an out of work Doctor to go stack shelves if he is unable to find work after 2 weeks?

No i wouldn't expect anyone after two weeks to stack shelves but all i am trying to say is if your daughter doesn't get any offers in her chosen industry is it wise to disregard any other industry when she has transferable skills.

mickyrod

Yes I think you are correct. The issue is she does not know how long the part time job will go on for. As I said earlier, she is helping to wind the company up. I have suggested that she "signs off" next week and only goes back to the job centre if her part time job closes and she still has not found an alternative.

DKLS

mickyrod wrote: »

So what ever happened to career choice? My daughter has previously won a National and regional Travel and Tourism award for salesperson of the year! Should she really be expected to give this all up within 2 weeks of finding herself made redundant?

Would you expect an out of work Doctor to go stack shelves if he is unable to find work after 2 weeks?

She could easily consider roles that could benefit from her skill set, such as PA, exhibitions and conference organising, etc these days you need to be flexible, I am a qualified accountant but do a totally different role in a different sector.

Mara69

mickyrod wrote: »

So what ever happened to career choice? My daughter has previously won a National and regional Travel and Tourism award for salesperson of the year! Should she really be expected to give this all up within 2 weeks of finding herself made redundant?

I don't think anyone has suggested she give up her dreams of working in that industry - simply that while times are so tough she should be applying for anything and everything. She can, of course, continue to apply for jobs in her chosen industry while working in another area. It is always easier to get a job when you have a job and I am sure any prospective employer in the Travel industry would admire her for not sitting on the dole.

mickyrod

Yes point taken!
I guess my daughter and I are both out of touch having been in full employment for th elast 8 and 41 years.

lovinituk

Its an unfortunate side effect of the current state of the economya nd there are not neccessarily the jobs around that people want to do. I was made redundant back in 2008 and to carry on in the same career would have meant long commutes or moving to another part of the country. I didn't want to take either of those options so went self employed and am now running a business that has nothing at all whatsoever to do with what I was qualified in. I much prefer doing what I'm doing at the moment. Perhaps it could be a good thing for your daugther too.

*edit* I forgot to say that Job Centre staff do have to be pretty thick skinned to deal with some of the 'undesirables' that are 'forced' to go there. I don't think anyone would be all smiles if they had to deal with some of the work shy low lifes that frequent Job Centres!

bluenoseam

mickyrod wrote: »

So what ever happened to career choice? My daughter has previously won a National and regional Travel and Tourism award for salesperson of the year! Should she really be expected to give this all up within 2 weeks of finding herself made redundant?

Would you expect an out of work Doctor to go stack shelves if he is unable to find work after 2 weeks?

I'm sure there are many people who've won employee of the month in various jobs, industry accreditation, awards for service and suchlike - unfortunately they're not going to pay the bills, which is after all, why the majority of us work. It's not that the job centre are asking her to give all that up, they're being perfectly correct in telling her that at this moment in time prospects are not so good as to be able to ONLY apply for one type of job for X period of time. That's not "rude" or anything, it's solid advice, for as much as their way of putting it might be considered at very best blunt, it's the truth - their opinion could be that prospects in the travel & tourism industry at this particular time are not good. By no account are the job centre saying she needs to give up on the dream of working in her ideal sector, but they're giving the realistic evaluation that at this time it's not the best time to be fussy.

Put it this way, if she doesn't apply for any jobs other than travel & tourism for say 3 months, that's 3 months she could potentially be on JSA. During those 3 months there could be the better chunk of 100+ jobs made available which she could do, all of them with potential to be earning more than JSA. By not applying for those, she's limiting herself to what she's earning. On top of this in 3 months time you'll have a bunch of people who have taken on temporary employment either comming back onto the unemployment market OR staying on in the job they took. If you look at it like that you'll see that in 3 months time the potential is that instead of 100 people applying for each position she'd be there's then 250+ people applying by the time you factor in seasonal employees.

What we're trying to get across is that yes, it does seem pretty bad to apply for something you've no notion of doing, but just because you HAVE a job doesn't exclude you from applying for another one. The Job Centre for once are actually trying to do your daughter a favour by having her cast her net as wide as possible until a perfect job comes along.

And for the record, if a Doctor has been unemployed for 2 weeks i'd be sort of worried as to WHY they're unemployed and yeah, i would also expect them to see the fact that an 8hr a week job still has potential to be worth more than JSA.

wantsajob

The DEA I see is very nice, although I'm not on JSA or ESA etc.

LadyMissA

mickyrod wrote: »

My daughter was recently made redundant after 8 years with her current company. Yesterday she went for her second interview at the job centre, and the staff were very very rude and arrogant. My daughter works in the travel industry, and following her studies in leasure and tourism got her job. After just 2 weeks of signing on, the staff are now trying to force her to look for a job as a receptionist, and are saying that if she does not apply she will be fined!

I could understand this if she had been looking for a couple of months, but after 2 weeks? she loves working in travel and that is what she is qualified in. She left the job centre in tears yesterday!

As her company have kept her on for 14 hours a week to help wind down the company, she is not getting any JSA. So all she is getting by way of benifits is her National Insurance paid. I have told her that if they try to bully her next week, tell them to stuff their NA and we will pay any outstanding amount when she finds a job that SHE wants. Did I say the right thing?

She surely would have signed an agreement as to what type of work she is looking for when she had a first interview. This will be looked at again in week 13 so unless they have now changed the rules I think they are just pressuring her here.

LadyMissA

pillion wrote: »

Does anyone know why they have removed all the newspapers from the JCP waiting area? You used to be able to look through the jobs sections in all the local papers while you waited but they are not there anymore.

maybe they just got stolen? I have never seen newspapers at the job centre