Jobcentres fit for purpose?

Having watched the fairly damning report and the subsequent interview with Tony McNulty, on the politics show, it was extremely disappointing that he once again showed how out of touch he is with the jobless in the UK and how hard it ACTUALLY is to get a job right now. Let's not forget that in Jan he told us all that there was light at the end of the tunnel and we need not paint such a bleak picture.

The feature they ran was about a guy in Elsmere Port looking for a job, as an ex Woolies manager he had pretty good transferable skills and was settling his sights as he put it lower than he should in order to get a job. According to Jobcentreplus the only roles they could offer were in Cardiff, Kent, Suffolk and a few others that would require relocation, from there he was told there was nothing else they could offer him. Asking about retraining per the Jobcentreplus message and he was told they would send him on a confidence building course after he had been claiming for 6 months.. Inadequate? Possibly. However as a group they really do suffer, 500 branches closed down in the last 6 years, a requirement for a tailored service for each person that comes in and no jobs. Not a dream combination for any company.

The upcoming dispatches show should be interesting their recent findings about the jobs that are available don't make great reading and should probably worry anyone who has a decent job that is currently under threat:

Analysis commissioned by Dispatches reveals that the largest percentage of vacancies at Jobcentres - more than a quarter - was for the lowest-paid work, typically shelf-stackers, catering porters or road sweepers.

The next biggest group - 19 per cent - includes call-centre staff, telesales and shop assistants. Only 6.4 per cent of vacancies are for managerial and professional occupations.

The 100,000 new jobs being created by the govt are completely unspecified and the Jobcentre network has no idea what they will be.

All in all not the rosiest picture for a Monday morning but do we bear some of the responsibility for it? Currently there is no requirement to advertise every job available through the jobcentre and a large number of companies avoid advertising there like the plague. The perception being that you will get a shelf stacker applying for a job as financial controller persists, lets face it in the old days of the jobcentre they were obliged to call every job you wanted to apply for and see if they would consider you. These days with the requirement for tailored jobseeking it should, in theory, work better.

The key thought I had was that with the downturn in the recruitment industry and consultants being left high and dry all over the place this presents an opportunity to hire in recruitment professionals who could work in that targeted environment they are used to whilst delivering something with a bit of social conscience. Having people who know how to interview and select candidates properly would help a lot of people back into work and improve the image of the jobcentre. That coupled with better functionality for the website and they could be a market leader, it is, after all, the largest recruitment website in the country that no-one uses.