*** WARNING – Long AndyR Post :lol: ***
I haven't been to a Job Centre for over ten or eleven years. But I have to admit I also found them extremely depressing and stressful.
I've met some very cool folks working in them, and some rather less so. In fact, I remember having a discussion with one of them that their job is one job I really would not want. I strongly suspect that it could naturally wear you down from a helpful "right, I'd like to make a difference" person to an unsympathetic cynical sort of person.
I have actually worked in the "area" myself for a couple of years. I was unemployed and got sent on "Training For Work" (they sent a programmer on a word-processing course). It gave me some Windows experience and I actually walked off the end of the course into a job as one of the Trainers with the independent firm providing the TFW.
While I was doing the job, I found that once you get the jobseeker/client (or whatever we're called nowadays) out of the "signing on etc" environment, and manage to gain their confidence/trust/respect, you can actually help a surprising number of people to turn themselves round.
The sign-on and the feelings of worthless-ness are what does everybody in. Also most of us find it hard to accept that our expectations, especially after a few months, need to be seriously re-addressed if we are to survive and get out of it ourselves.
I had ex bank managers etc, go through the courses I ran. And they were expecting to earn what the last job had been paying them. In the "job search" part of the training, they'd say to me "but I need £xk to survive" (they'd knock off a couple off their last salary). But if those jobs don't exist, then you can't have it - and the b@stards already in jobs are the ones that will invariably get any jobs that do crop up.
I was able to use my experience (figures-wise this was quite while back) to say: "look, I was on £26K and got made redundant. I was like you, and said I need £23K and that I was "a programmer" - I was unemployed for two years and going nowhere. My technical experience was out-of-date and I gave off an "unemployed victim" vibe with a chip on my shoulder. I eventually worked out that I could stick my head above water on £8K, and even survive on £9K. When I realised that, I wasn't happy with it, but it meant I could look at more options. And when I started looking in that way, I got this job. I started it on £12K and it was a king's ransom when I landed it (I hardly noticed it was less than half my previous salary). The big thing is, and do not under-estimate this, it's MY money and I don't need to sign-on anymore, life has started again and f*ck the lot of them... I'm not staying here, when I've done a bit and got my CV looking stable again, I'll be climbing the ladder again. You're in the same place I was... You're going to have to start again, and the sooner you realise it, and set realistic bottom-line requirements, the sooner you'll be back up the ladder where you were chucked off from..."
Amazingly, this worked. This particular example was talking to a guy who'd been on £50-60K as a development manager or something. He was "long-term" unemployed when I got him, and very cynical. Not unemployable, not at all, but a prospective employer looking at his CV and possibly interviewing him for 40 minutes wouldn't have had the luxury that I had of seeing what he might be able to offer.
I got him to re-evaluate to £25K, bottom-line. He fought this for some time, but he got there. In his case, I had to get him to think about other stuff (his marriage was on the rocks because he was at home griping about what had been taken away from him) and eventually he realised it wasn't all about money. A few weeks after he completed the course he came in grinning from ear to ear. He'd just accepted a job for £45K, expecting it to rise to £60-70 in a year or two. He couldn't have done it, and admitted this, when he'd been going "I'm worth £55K at least".
He'd been sat next to a couple of teenagers who'd never worked, and a woman who was going back to work after bringing up kids for 15-20 years. Similar approaches, but different, were needed for them.
It was basically getting someone to accept that they'd not got what they thought they were owed - so kiss it goodbye, the train left without you. It was about accepting that you'd lost a battle but it didn't mean you'd lost the war. If you're off the ladder, for whatever reason, you have actually lost the game, and you can't expect to get a medal for it unless you start playing again. Instead, find out how to sneak back in to the game and then let the b@stards have it. Don't accept the message that you're worthless, you're not, no-one is.
In hindsight, when I was unemployed, these were the same things that personal advisors at the Job Centre were trying to give me. But (unless it's changed drastically) I really don't think we can get through to people like this in the Job Centre environment. One of the things that gets the required trust from jobseekers, enabling them to hear and accept this obvious "home-truth", is treating them as individuals and more importantly as equals. All my experience of Job Centre situations is that the whole environment, and what governments have to use it for, and what the media says about it, and what the earning members of society think about it – all this screams "You are not my equal, you are worthless, you are to be viewed with suspicion..."
Even when you get an advisor who is good, you still hate being in the place. And what if he/she is ill or on holiday on the day you go in? You might get the dragon from the next desk, who doesn't know you from Adam, and who puts it right back to "well, are you actually looking for work then?"
And like several have said – almost by definition, the place is full of losers, people who have accepted that they're "worthless" and therefore don't give two sh1ts.
But I don't really see how we can improve the place – it's just how we operate and view ourselves as members of society.
Big respect from me to you Richard. I feel very strongly about this stuff – it hasn't taken much thinking about it to bring it all back again from well over ten years ago. I suspect that you probably feel the same (maybe different approaches/solutions). But I really don't think I could hack being in your job. I hope you're able to leave the job at work enough – in the TFW I was doing 15 years or so ago, I was taking too much of it home. After the initial "getting a job" buzz, it was starting to get me down. There was still the moment of "wow!" when someone woke themselves up or, even better, got a job. But the daily grind of seeing defeated humans... I found it took too much out of me (and unless it's changed, I guess that at a Job Centre you don't get many people coming back and saying "hey I got a job! thanks for your help").
