Many comments here, and on other Blogs by the
unemployed, take up Universal Jobmatch.
Having to register with UJ, as a condition
of receiving JSA, was and is, a big issue.
As is whether or not DWP advisers should have to
right to be able to look directly on people’s own accounts.
But more recently people have concentrated, more
and more, on the faults of this site.
Here are a few.
- You have to Log in with a identity in numbers. Most web stuff, like E-Mail, uses a combination of easy to remember name and a couple of numbers. With all the lists of numbers you already have (Debit card, phone and so on), another one is hard to recall. I suspect most of us have to write this one down and keep it – something you don’t always have to hand.
- You regularly sent a list of Job alerts. The jobs on them are practically never relevant. When they are they could be in addresses that could range (for Ipswich) from London, Southampton to Lincoln. This is clearly an automatically generated system that probably rakes in some money for the American owners of the site, Monster, but is of no help for us.
- When you do a job search yourself on the site you nearly always tumble on a demand to go through another up-loading CV process, or a long and elaborate form-filling. Most people, that is those using public computer terminals, simply physically cannot do this. Suffolk libraries for example, do not permit uploading from memory sticks, or allow the time to fill in a complicated form.
- I have yet to hear from somebody who has got a simple register that you have made a Job Application from an employer.
- I have yet to hear of anybody who got a job through Universal Jobmatch. Not that there aren’t any – there must be. But amongst the unemployed forced to use the scheme its reputation is simple: you have to use it and show you’ve done so, when you give your fortnightly ‘essay’ on your job search.
I bet there’s plenty more to say!
