Universal Job Match at http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk

freeoffers

Ok, so yesterday I saw my advisor and she told me that I have to sign up to the website. Once I've done so I must give her my email address the next time I sign on. She'll be able to recommend jobs for me to apply for and see what I have done to look for work.

She said it takes the place of the sheet I was filling out. Have tried to register but there's a problem with the site.

When I do I'll allow the JC to access my details because how else are they going to know what I've done to search for work. Do I like it? No. But I wouldn't like them to stop the money either.

Good luck to anyone else who does not allow the JC access to their details. I know people have said that it's not mandatory, etc, etc but quite frankly I'm not going to take the word of people on here above my job advisor, who has actually been of great help in finding training courses and avenues into work.

People have to make up their on mind though.

Gaz1971

The point I make John is this, while you argue that the opinion of JC staff is worthless, they are the ones who decide if you have satisfied the JSA requirements to get your money. SO if they say you must do this, and you dont, you wont get any money.

Can you afford to live with no income?

And for the record, I have signed up but denied them access, and Ill discuss this with them when I sign on as I expect there will be plenty of questions being asked by everyone, including JCP staff.

weeta_bix

Al_chemist wrote: »

As others have said there's a lot of assumptions (mainly incorrect) and scare-mongering on this thread. FWIW here's some facts for you - it's up to you if you chose to believe them or not, I can't force you. Apologies for a lengthy first post.

You don't HAVE to register on UJ but if your advisor thinks it would improve your prospects of finding work they can (and in many cases, WILL) issue you with a direction to register.

You CANNOT be forced, under direction or otherwise, to give DWP permission to have access to your UJ account.

If you DON'T give DWP permission to acces your account they cannot access it. It's that simple. No skullduggery.

If you DO give DWP permission to access your account they will access it via an icon on their desktop. They will need wither your user id or email to be able to do this. They will NOT be signing in to your account via your id and email in teh way that you would. They will be able to see activity on your account. They will NOT be able to see any other internet activity - that's just ridiclous to even think they would.

Your jobseeker's agreement will be changed to remove references to Jobseeker Direct and replaced with UJ.

A large part of JCP's responsibility is to check conditionality - whether you are meetingthe conditions of recieving Jobseeker's Allowance. The clue is in the name of the benefit. JCP need to see that you are actually jobseeking. If you are not complying with your JSAgreement, or with a direction, they will question your conditionality - that's when it goes to a decison maker. If you say you're looking for work but refuse to register on UJ they will question your conditionality.

One of the benefits of UJ is that you can record all other jobsearch activity on it, if you want to. So if you chose to do that and give DWP permission to access your account, you will NOT need to provide written proof of your jobsearch.

Work Programme providers are private companies - they will NOT have access to your UJ account.

UJ is a brand new IT system. It's a massive project, and as with any large IT project there are teething problems, but they're being worked on all the time.
Not all jobs that were advertised with JCP when UJ went live have migrated properly, it's fair to say that as new jobs go on they should improve.
Poorly worded job adverts are down to employers - they will self-serve on UJ, they're the ones who type in the wording now.

The idea is that UJ will become the leading jobsearch site for UK - why wouldn't a genuine jobseeker want to use this to look for work?

As for registering with an alias etc - yes, brilliant idea. That's not exactly going to be appealing to an employer. Good luck with getting a job that way.

And here's a couple of thoughts for some of you... it's 2012. Online recruitment is becoming the way of the world. CV drops to shops / offices is fast becoming extinct. Jobseekers need to be using the internet an increasing amount to look for work.

If you've been sending out 50 CVs a week (online or otherwise) and just aren't getting responses - it's highly possible that your CV needs tweaking in some way.
Giving DWP access to your account means they can see if they need to help you get your CV right so it works for you. They can also have a look to see if your profile needs fiddling around with, if your skills etc need changing to increase your chances of getting matches. They can actually help you.

If you're not registered on UJ (as with any other jobsearch site) you won't be in the pot to get matched to new jobs as they come online. You'll miss out. Yes you can do a search, but the people who are registered who are matched will recieve an automatic notification - they may well have applied before you do your search. As the great lottery people say, you have to be in it to win it.

Employers can carry out a search of the labour market to see if there's anyone registered on UJ who meets their criteria without having to post a job! They will get anonymised details of the people who match (without their name etc etc), and will be able to send a message to them via the UJ system. If they find someone they like they won't therefore even advertise the job. So anyone not registered won't get a sniff.

And people who don't have computers / internet access / IT skills etc. There is an increasing amount of support out there, because as stated above, it's 2012. The chance of someone getting a job if they can't do some pretty basic stuff on the internet is really slim. Obviously I can't speak for the whole country but libraries generally have free internet access (our local one is NEVER booked out fully), many jobcentres also have computers specifically for customers to use to look for work. Some jobcentres will be able to coach people in how to use the internet to look for work. And there are free IT courses around.

So there you go, hope this clears a few things up for you. It's time to put your tinfoil hats away people :-)

Sounds to me like you have actually use this system from the advisers point of view. Have you used the system?

Al_chemist

weeta_bix wrote: »

Sounds to me like you have actually use this system from the advisers point of view. Have you used the system?

Let's just say that I *do* know what I'm talking about

I just want to put the record straight; there's a lot of confusion & speculation on here. I'd hate to think that genuine jobseekers would miss out because they've been scared into not signing up by some of the tripe that's on this thread.

kimmy393

Midnighter wrote: »

You're not alone with that I'm having the exact same problem. Strange though that it says you won't be able to create or upload a CV without accepting cookies yet I have been able to. Also, did anybody have problems even registering with the site? It says that when you register your details it will display a User ID. Yet when I did, it didn't. I had to register again with the exact same details before it would display one. I've also had to verify me email address at least twice. It seems like most other government IT ventures. A complete f*** up.

Yes it took me an hour to register kept going round in circles, then an hour to rebuild me cv on the sie as it would not let me upload it:mad:. So 2 hours then went to apply for jobs and the cookies problem occured, so have not been able to apply via site only via the email addy from the employer. So frustrating Have you managed to fix it yet??

Also your user id seems to be a combination of 12 numbers, how are you meant to remember that anyways, why cant you choose your own username !!

Al_chemist

kimmy393 wrote: »

Also your user id seems to be a combination of 12 numbers, how are you meant to remember that anyways, why cant you choose your own username !!

Your user ID will be used to access an increasing range of governement services in time, including things like car tax, passport renewals etc etc.

weeta_bix

Al_chemist wrote: »

Let's just say that I *do* know what I'm talking about

I just want to put the record straight; there's a lot of confusion & speculation on here. I'd hate to think that genuine jobseekers would miss out because they've been scared into not signing up by some of the tripe that's on this thread.

I'm fairly sure you are probably referring to some of my comments when you talk about scare-mongering. However you haven't really addressed my concerns about third parties. Can you shed any light on this?

Also, you seem to make the assumption that a Jobcenter Advisers would have top level admin access. I would imagine that this would not be the case, I imagine they would have some kind of medium level access. I would imagine that there is a level where Advisers themselves can be monitored, and a level above that for website administrators to fix any problems.

john539

Al_chemist wrote: »

Let's just say that I *do* know what I'm talking about

I just want to put the record straight; there's a lot of confusion & speculation on here. I'd hate to think that genuine jobseekers would miss out because they've been scared into not signing up by some of the tripe that's on this thread.

And slightly biased through rose tinted spectacles.

Do you work for JC or UJM site developer ?

As I said to csmw

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=57363597&postcount=192

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=57376331&postcount=212

Do you understand informed consent ?

Jobseekers need information on what's happening with their private data & private online
activity to give informed consent.

Al_chemist

weeta_bix wrote: »

I'm fairly sure you are probably referring to some of my comments when you talk about scare-mongering. However you haven't really addressed my concerns about third parties. Can you shed any light on this?

Also, you seem to make the assumption that a Jobcenter Advisers would have top level admin access. I would imagine that this would not be the case, I imagine they would have some kind of medium level access. I would imagine that there is a level where Advisers themselves can be monitored, and a level above that for website administrators to fix any problems.

Haha, I thought my post was fairly comprehensive, apologies for missing a concern. For the record, I'm responding in my own time and therefore reserve the right to not pick up on every single point, I don't think that's unreasonable.

But.. re third parties... have you not considered that employers are third parties??

re access: I'm making no assumptions. I don't need to. JCP staff have a level of access that enables them to view an account they have been given permission to. They can also do job searches etc of course. Admin access is not required for this because UJ has been set up with this facility.
Managers have slightly different access, of course.
Website admin is covered by Monster who are contracted to do this.
As I said in my big post, DWP staff will acccess UJ via an icon on their desktop.

And, anticipating the next question: yes Monster were awarded the contract to provide the IT and IT support. BUT, and read this bit twice if you need to, this does NOT give Monster any advantages over the jobs posted.

My advice, if you're at all worried about what JCP can see on your account is to give them access before you go in next time, and ask them to show you. You can always run home and remove permission if you're still not comfortable with it.

weeta_bix

Al_chemist wrote: »

Haha, I thought my post was fairly comprehensive, apologies for missing a concern. For the record, I'm responding in my own time and therefore reserve the right to not pick up on every single point, I don't think that's unreasonable.

But.. re third parties... have you not considered that employers are third parties??

re access: I'm making no assumptions. I don't need to. JCP staff have a level of access that enables them to view an account they have been given permission to. They can also do job searches etc of course. Admin access is not required for this because UJ has been set up with this facility.
Managers have slightly different access, of course.
Website admin is covered by Monster who are contracted to do this.
As I said in my big post, DWP staff will acccess UJ via an icon on their desktop.

And, anticipating the next question: yes Monster were awarded the contract to provide the IT and IT support. BUT, and read this bit twice if you need to, this does NOT give Monster any advantages over the jobs posted.

My advice, if you're at all worried about what JCP can see on your account is to give them access before you go in next time, and ask them to show you. You can always run home and remove permission if you're still not comfortable with it.

My issue with Monster is not that they have some kind of job advantage, that hadn't even crossed my mind to be honest. My concern is that own jobs site and the one they built for the US Gov. which is supposedly more advanced that the UJM site, was hacked and all the private data of their users was leaked.

I would never give out all this kind of information to any other website, so why should I give it to a company that are known for not taking good care of it?

So in this case, even if I don't allow JCP staff access to my account, the problems with data security will have already occurred, because by registering, my details have gone to a US server of a company I do not trust. So how could I take you advise? It doesn't help.

Then added on top of this you have the clause that they can pass data on to third parties. It could literally end up anywhere.

However, thank you for clearing up the issue about different levels of access. I do appreciate you taking you own time to do this.