New job?

[Sajehar]

I had the weirdest conversation with a rather posh restaurant owner a few days back. I was walking back home from shopping for some essentials, when I saw this bloke sticking a hand written notice advertising for a waiter/waitress in his window.
These notices used to be common several years back, but I haven’t seen any at all for yonks.

The door was open, so I cheekily stuck my head in and said, “Hey, things must be looking up, you’re looking for staff.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” he replied, “I just can’t face my inbox anymore.”

Intrigued, I asked him what on earth did his inbox have to do with waiters?
Surprisingly, he invited me in for a coffee (for free, plus a really nice cake. Well, a tart actually. Crunchy, buttery pastry with a seriously yummy vanilla custardy filling topped with some jelly type glazed grapes, pears and apples. It was so bloody delicious that if I could afford to eat like this every day then I’d soon be obese; and I don’t even like cakes and stuff as they’re usually way toosickly sweet, but this wasn’t.)

But I digestively digress…. It was a SERIOUSLY tasty cake/tart/whatever.

To cut a long story short, this bloke was fed up of being overwhelmed by the amount of applicants he got for his entry levels jobs on offer.
So he’s stopped using the official government website for jobseekers, which job seekers are forced to use apparently, because he can no longer cope with a 100 plus emails a day whenever he advertised a job there.

According to him, people are applying for his job/jobs who have no intention of taking them up because they are forced to by the job centre to hit some arbitrary target of applying for so many jobs a week.

“How am I supposed to wade through that? I have a restaurant to run.”


And it drove him nuts. He doesn’t want qualified engineers, etc, applying for his jobs, who leave out they are engineers on their CV, to use him as a stop gap until something better turns up. And then he has to start all over again, with all the expenses involved of having spent 3 months training somebody in ‘Silver Service’ who never intended using it in the first place.

According to him, it’s illegal to make out you have more qualifications than you do. He thinks it should also be illegal to make out you don’t have qualifications that you do have.

And that’s why he’s decided to bin advertising on the jobseekers thingy, and advertise via a hand written notice instead. So much for technology.

Well, I noticed his handwritten advert. I hope others will to. And he’ll get the local workers he wanted. He did NOT want people applying from Widnes, Preston for a p/t position… “How would they afford the traveling costs?”
Not a chance on it, but you have to be prepared to travel 1.5 hours each way, even for a NWW p/t job. No employer in their right mind would employ a person under those conditions… I just want a local person to do a local job… is that too much to ask?

“I’m the one that has to sort through this bullshit. I’ve had enough of my inbox. I can’t cope with it anymore.”

Says it all really.

Reminds me of those tractor quotas for the Soviet union… same difference.

[Melly1]

'Tis madness. He's right. It explains why folk applying for jobs rarely get replies, interesting to hear it from the employer's point of view. The system clearly isn't serving job seekers or employers, only those ticking boxes.

Melly1

Ps So glad you enjoyed your treat. You'll have to pop in again too see if his ad worked ... He might give you another!

[bowlingbun]

I'm sure he wanted you to apply!

[Henrietta]

Just goes to show the old fashioned way of job hunting walking up and down the road with your eyes peeled and ears scanned can still pay dividends.
My custard eclaire from ASDA isn't looking quite so yummy any more

[royd]

Very interesting view, i would have never thought of the employer having go throught emails like they need to do now days. The person whos looking for a job needs to apply for so many jobs a week, but if someones wanting a certain position a type of job but will only be so many in there area with reasonable traveling times and the job centre putting pressure on so they have to apply for any job thats out there.
But i think it's been like that since i was in job club before i was a carer back in the early 90's, but then again i wasn't using a computer and email back then to apply for jobs, just old fashion letter sending.
They said computers would make life loads easy, in some ways yes but job centres don't use common sense now, and they are on quotas to get people off any benefit throught a sanction (we can find all the horror stories about those on the web) or into any job even if the job as no hours to give like the zero hours contract rubbish who can live off that, in my view they should be banned, better stop i'm off on a rant now

[Sajehar]

Bowlingbun…. He did ask me to do the job?

Considering that I looked a wreck, complete with bright green hoddie, mangy rabbit skinned combat jacket, and steel toe-capped boots (It was cold, and I was protecting my ears and toes), I’m amazed he asked me in in the first place.

After bending my ear about the jobseekers thingie, and wittering on about how I could earn £11 per hour ‘ front of house’ (Yeh… right!) IF I knew how to yield calculator.

“I can yield a calculator…. Except I don’t know how… I just do?”

It’s the weirdest thing; I just do. If somebody puts a bunch of figures in front of me; I somehow know what to do with them. I don’t know why, or how, but I can.
He didn’t believe me (I don’t blame him)

So he asked me if VAT increases from 17.5 to 20%, what is the increase?

I told him it was nearly 15% (14.26% to be precise.)

He was gobsmacked I didn’t say 2.5%, but why would I? A 2.5p in the pound (a true 2.5% increase) increase isn’t the same as a 2.5p increase over 17.5p… that’s a lot more. Any idiot knows that.

But I couldn’t tell him my mobile number. I had to tap ‘Me’ into its memory to bring it up.

That was a bit embarrassing; plus I told him about looking after my mum. But I still have his business card.

I passed his restaurant on Sunday… the handwritten notice is gone. I do hope that means he got the employee he wanted.

[Scally]

Good post.
I make my living knocking on doors and asking people if they can help me, by answering a few questions./
50% of the time, they can.
It isnt rocket science, but most people wouldnt do it, because they fear rejection.
More fools they.
It is easy money.

[Sajehar]

I have been on a fact finding mission over the past few days, and was shocked by what I found.

I went on this government website, called Universal Job Match, and its rubbish.

I typed in ‘care assistant’ then Merseyside, and hit search. All it came up with was 83 hits… not particularly impressive.

But it gets worse. Something called ‘Company Confidential’ came up 33 times. I clicked on the details for each of those ‘Company Confidential’ entries: Same area, same job description, same company email address, same name/telephone to contact.

Was this 33 different jobs being advertised, or one job being advertised 33 times? Or something in between? There was no way of telling.

But it gets even worse. I also noticed another company (named this time) who advertised 21 jobs. Guess what? The same telephone number/company email address came up to contact as the ‘Company Confidential’ one. What is going on?

So, out of 83 jobs, 54 of them were for the same company. I rang them, out of curiosity more than anything.

No jobs were currently available, but if I’d like to send my CV in, they’d be happy to put me on their books (whatever that means.)

Turns out these jobs are zero hours (despite being advertised on UJM as full time.)

Needless to say, I will not be sending my CV into this company.

To confuse matters even worse, I typed in the exact same criteria the next day into UJM, and got 400 hits? Same thing though; massive replication of the same jobs… URGHHH!

[bowlingbun]

No wonder genuinely unemployed looking for work claimants are depressed and fed up with the system.

[Sajehar]

Bowlingbun, Royd, it gets even worse.

I popped into my parent’s local job centre this morning; again just out of curiosity.

It looked awful nice, but was deserted.

I approached a lady who looked bored. I asked her where are those Job Point things? (touch screen machines that listed jobs available.)

“They went ages ago, dearie.”

I then asked her why are there no laminated books of jobs…. They went ages ago too, apparently.

I then asked the obvious question, “Why are you called a Job Centre if you don’t actually offer any jobs?”

She told me to look on UJM… Kafka could not make this up!!!!

A Job Centre that offers no jobs other than via an official website, which is rubbish in comparison to others. Yet, if you don’t use this UJM pile of crock, you can have your JSA stopped for a minimum of a month, even if you use much better websites.
Since when did it become an ‘offence’ in this country NOT to use a particular government run website… shades of the STASI coming in here!

Since when did a government supposedly determined to shrink the ‘state’ away from ‘nannyism’ decide that their website was better than those ‘private’ ones… so much so, that you are now forced to use it?

That makes no sense to me. I mean, if it was that good, wouldn’t people be using it anyway? So, why the coercion?

Plus, I’m still at a loss as to why a so-called ‘Job Centre’ offered no jobs. What are they there for otherwise?

Oh, and to rub salt into my wounds (and I’m not even jobseeking properly until my mum dies) I also found out that the Civil Service don’t advertise their own jobs on this site that everybody else is expected to advertise on, apply to.

“Why not?

Write your own replies… this is Kafka territory