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Continuing on the recruitment shortcomings theme.

  • Keith Povall
  • Jan 14, 2021
  • 3 min read

It was late November I reported on the plight of my friend, a similar age to me (over 60), who'd lost his job running a betting shop (which he had done for many years) and so finds himself unemployed.


Put in the hands of a training and job coach, he was allegedly in the running for a Customer Service post with a large local employer (a plc).


Part of the requirement of applying for this job was that he complete a 90 hour IT course, which he has done. He's had one video interview with the employer and was told he would be put through to the next stage, another video interview with a panel.


I spoke with him yesterday and he has heard absolutely nothing.


The job coach who he has chased, has been trying to encourage him to take on more training courses.


I found to my own painful experience ten years ago, when I was recovering from my Cancer surgery, how ineffectual these job coaches are, when I had to visit weekly mine to provide evidence of my job search activities. A girl with chipped nail varnish, who used to tap stuff into her computer and let me go home.


Whenever I enquired about the services to candidates they advertised, I was told there was no funding available.


In short, almost 2 years, this outfit provided nothing in the way of help or support.


A private company, milking thousands a week from the government to get people "ready for work". I was in the WAG, the Work Activity Group.


I remember some years ago, reading that if you were on a training course, you no longer showed on the jobless figures.


Ditto, if you were on the sick. I remember about fifteen years ago discussing this with a doctor friend who told me GPs had been pressured to put people on the sick (for this very reason). I won't say which government was in power.


When the cost of paying the long term sick became a financial embarrassment, along came the farcical WCA Work Capability Assessment, where everyone on the sick books, was sent for an assessment not with a doctor, even their own physician, but a person with some medical training (a nurse possibly).


They asked a set of questions, the answers for each scored points or more often than not, ZERO points.


Again, a private company was providing the service (at that time a French outfit called ATOS) who had a tendency to prescribe people missing limbs, as fit for work. One of the set questions being do you foresee your condition improving?


All the time, the losers are those in difficulty, whilst someone else earns a decent wedge for going through the motions and more often making the individual's situation worse. The losers were chucked of the sick benefit, on to Jobseekers losing a minimum of thirty quid a week.


All the time, hiding behind that warm fuzzy term HELP.


Returning to my pal's plight. We appreciate Covid has created problems all round. However, in the case of a recruitment programme, there is no reason whatsoever why a three line e mail of reassurance could be sent to explain the lack of forward movement.


This lad's girlfriend also found herself out of work, as a housekeeper to a well off family due to the Covid situation.


She's actively seeking work and like most in this situation, receiving no response to jobs she could ably do (most via recruitment agencies).

When there's a surplus of candidates for just about any sort of job, you don't a recruitment consultant in the equation. FACT.






 
 
 

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