Jobcentre turns to the iPhone The UK's Jobcentre Plus service is now available through an iPhone application and Android, providing a vital service to the jobless-but-gadget-obsessed. The app is free to download and provides for keyword searching, with location-specific filtering and maps showing where the work is - we found the location part a bit …
Being one of the current 2 point something million unemployed people currently trying to find a new job in this globally f**ked up job market, would someone please tell me what the effing hell the point of this App is? There are search engines actually in the Job Centre, and they're "happy" (well, not deeply uncooperative) in helping you go through the listings if you DON'T have a PC.
I cannot believe that the take up of iPhones in the unemployed is so high that it warranted money being spent on unmitigated crap like this.
Prioirities anyone?
"Foaming at the mouth rant? There's an App for that"
Given the jobcenter insist on having a copy of your CV yet are utterly unable to accept it in any digital form or indeed afford the means to print out a copy from a memory stick or any other digital format I realy have to question there priorities.
On one hand there forcing people to use hardcopy and on the other they have a iPhone app. Seriously how many people who own a iPhone are unemployed and looking for work as I would like to speak to them both and ask them what there secret is in dealing with the jobcenter.
Lets not talk about the phones they alow peole to use to make the expensive calls about jobs etc. A public look has more privacy then these, I wonder how many NI numbers are stolen just by overhearing everyword others say.
The bastards dont even have Jedi as an option to tick on your religious beliefs which is the 4th largest religion of this country and clearly being descriminated against by those types of forms and the fact you cant tick a box saying Earthian on your ethnic origin box is another form of pushing people to descriminate.
What next, giving small women and large tall men the same amount to live on for food so that were only left with midgets as there there only ones who can afford to eat a balanced diet.
I realy dont see how the current system as a whole could be in a more fail state, indeed I dare not think what the lib dems would of done to it all.
Thanks for wasting my taxes on this useless crap HM Gov. Having been unemployed for a while last year I can say that an iPhone / Android app would definitely not have helped me find a job using my old Motorola. Especially when I was struggling to pay the bill for just a few calls & texts a month.
Instead you should have spent the money on increasing benefits or employing staff with more than one brain cell.
1. Put a bloody text search on their (POS) Jobcentre kiosk (and maybe whilst they're at it, fix the damn search thingie on their braindead web service. last time I tried a text search for Linux jobs, I got a number of Chef jobs returned first.. go figure..
Btw, when I did mention this to someone at the local JC, I was told the safest way of getting accurate results on the web interface from their database is to use the code numbers they use to categorize vacancies, e.g. 3131 (IT Ops Technician), 3132 (IT User Technician), pity I can't find a a complete list anywhere.
2. Give us (temporarily, hopefully) unemployed bods a Jesus Phone so we can use this service that my taxes (up to last month) no doubt handsomely payed some twonks to develop (though, probably this amount was only a teeny fraction compared to the monies wasted on the usual Civil Service BS meetings,procedures etc which led to this thing being developed in the first instance.)
so not so much a 'Gissa job', more a 'Gissa Job's..'
So the government wants the unemployed to find work. Yet they make it almost impossible since the job search system ignores your specifications and gives you a totally unrelated job in a town hundreds of miles from where you specified.
But, if you're somone who is interested enough in technology to carry an android smartphone or an iphone (ignoring costs etc, people get new phones then get made redundant), then you can litterally job seek. You can walk around, phone in hand, waiting for a bleep when the gps finds a job somewhere near to you. This is GENIUS!!
Its a bit like a recruitment agency, for people too stupid to realise that recruitment agencies exist, and once registered with them, they will let you know about any jobs they think might be suitable and forward your cv on for you if you wish.
Paris, because she doesnt mind getting dirty on the night shift even though she doesnt really need to work a day in her life.
I got a bit hacked off that they'd closed my local Jobcentre here in Cockermouth. The then Jobcentreplus web-site was, well, crap. Its replacement, Jobseekers Direct, wasn't much better. So, I wrote one myself. It can be found by entering "Unofficial Cockermouth Jobcentre Plus Mirror" into your favourite search-engine, I'm leery about posting the URL, for that way spam-madness lies.
Not from Cockermouth? Well, there's a version that allows you to find out what your local Jobcentre's posted in the last 48 hours too. It should have been crawled by now, look for "Unofficial National Jobcentre Plus Mirror". It is currently in a state of flux and is completely under-resourced. Be gentle with it.
When I as a IT engineer became recently unemployed I went to the Job Centre expecting a new job soon.
I was amazed that they had NO category for IT people. I was stuck in 'Electrical/Electronics'.
The next day I heard a Radio 4 programme about how the Job Centre isn't even getting jobs given to them by employers looking for white collar workers and they have no categories for people like me. So I was a bit miffed to say the least.
God, no wonder we go to Agencies and the like and suffer the indignity of these insane private organisations.
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