Foreign Perspectives

Since I’m “between jobs” in one sense albeit still employed in another (career breaks are confusing things) I’ve been signing on as unemployed for the last few weeks.

One of the key things that you need to do if you want to get what they now call “job seekers allowance” is to look for jobs. Fair enough and indeed that’s how it always should have been as the whole idea behind the organisation concerned was to provide some assistance to tide people over when they were between jobs.

Anyway,  in the absense of a job, so far, at the end of the career break I’ve been taking the opportunity to look around for one. Amazingly enough I found what seemed to be the perfect job last week although on first reading of the requirements it seemed to rule me out. Second read of the actual detail of the requirements though and it was a different matter so I thought I’d apply for it. Snag was that by the time I’d identified it as a serious possibility it was coming up to the time that I needed to “sign on” for the “job seekers” allowance

No problem, sure all I needed to do was to call them and let them know I was in the midst of applying for a job, eh? Well, no, because that was my signing on time they said I MUST come down and do just that. But, isn’t the whole objective of the place to get people into jobs? Yes, but you MUST come down now because we can’t change your signing time for anything was their reply.

As it turned out the application took a lot less time than I’d expected so I was able to do both albeit arriving quite late for the “signing on”.

Seems that the renaming of the place as “jobs & benefits” has left the emphasis on “benefits” rather than getting jobs after all.