To receive my government "looking for work" payment - more commonly referred to as the dole - I have to prove fortnightly that I am, in fact, actively looking for work (bummer, because I'd rather not, but that's beside the point). Part of this process is registering with a job search agency and then being rudely told what to do by them, because they have the power of god over your future payments. Don't attend an appointment, you get a breach and a possible cut of your payment.
Here's what happened at the first required interview:
1. Vic walks in the door, resume and portfolio tucked under her arm, looks at the milling crowd of other hopeless cases and politely makes her way to the counter.
2. Vic is handed a questionnaire and told not to bother filling most of it out because she has an existing resume of her own.
3. Vic returns said questionnaire and is told that's all she has to do, so she can go now. No introduction to the facilities, no meeting the consultants, nothing.
Two weeks later I received a letter in the mail from this company that I am required to be registered with. It contained a welcome letter that looked like it had been photocopied from a copy fifteen generations past the original. It contained a job description of something they had going that they felt I was qualified best for - selling model aircraft in a specialist hobby shop. And it contained a new resume that they had prepared just for me.
It looked like the resume I had handed them at the 'interview'. Except it wasn't. One section had been moved. They copied the layout style. But the thing that got me... The information that they copied from my existing resume contained spelling mistakes. So now instead of looking not particularly qualified I look incompetent and not particularly qualified.
Fucktards.
Today I start a four week intensive job search training course with this company, because it is of course a decree from the payment god that I do so. Let's call it character building. If I can get through a day without telling them they're a pack of overbearing idiots who can't spell I will be a stronger person inside.
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3 comments:
clearly they do a good job. they can even place people who are incompetent and not qualified...retyping resumes for them.
oh no! that is terrible. Get your butt out of there and fast!
Woah! What an awesome job, Vic.
Hey, when the recession hit in the eighties and all the architects got laid off I went through exactly the same process and wound up as a filing clerk in the tax office for six months. The hardest part of the interview was persuading them that being a filing clerk was my dream and that I wouldn't run of back to architecture as soon as the first job became available (yeah, right).
In that six months I found the time to build a shit hot band and screw my way through the tax office. I also goto buns of steel from toting heavy files up to high shelves.
If I'd been selling model planes in a hobby shop I might well still be there. That's something I might well look to do when I retire.
Use the time well, Vic. Think of it as taking a breather before doing what you want to do.
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