Sirona Says

The 'Slippery Shoulder' advice given by Job Centres and Outplacement Companies

I have had many phone calls over the last few weeks from my local Yellow Pages, from job seekers looking for work. Now I don't have a big spread in the directory, just a one line entry, so to be getting these calls is unusual. What is even more disturbing to me is why they are calling, and then more importantly what they say when they call.

Bad advice from the Outplacement Companies and Job Centres

The common theme for many of my calls is the source of their advice - outplacement firms or outplacement consultants.
I would like to start by saying, that I have absolutely no problem with the fact that job seekers are calling me looking for work. The fact is they are probably in the minority by actually being proactive, but it is great that they have called in the first place.
Obviously, one of the first things I ask is why are they calling me. All of them have found themselves out of work and they had been 'told' to call every agency in the (local) Yellow Pages and register with them for work!
The answer to who told them to call, has been the same - a couple of outplacement firms and the job centre.

The problem is that both parties - the outplacement firms and the Job Centre, probably believe that they have done their job well in advising these job seekers to do this - the Job Centre can tick another box on their 'helped a job seeker form', while the outplacement firm can invoice for 'another' person they have 'helped'. The trouble is with this form of slippery shoulder advice is that it is totally rubbish, meaningless and a waste of time.

Who is actually helping the unemployed find a job?

Every single day in the media there is news of more redundancies - even the BBC have put a job loss tracker on their website - but have you ever taken a minute to think who is actually helping these people find a job. And when I mean helping them get back to work, I don’t mean assistance in filling in a form at the local Job Centre!

What I mean is proper and honest advice from professionals that can actually help and advise these people that have lost their jobs - people that can actually add some real value to helping the unemployed find work.

This post came about from an article of Fistful of Talent that I read earlier today concerning the trend in the USA for people to charge circa $2000 to write CV’s for executives looking for work. This particular post started my cogs going and I then started to think about the UK, and how people are actually going to find work again.

So what are the ways that people can get help in writing a CV, interview skills, using the internet job boards as well as many more areas of job hunting? Where do they go and what chances of success should they expect?

So who is helping the unemployed find a job?

Schools/Colleges career advisors
Suffice to say that, in my opinion, the majority of these people are just way off the mark. I have seen the advice they have given out to a good number of people and quite frankly, it is mostly common sense and a waste of time. They are usually too far detached from the real world and the harsh realities of the working world. There will of course be some very good advisors out there who care passionately about their students finding work, and if you have been exposed to them then you are very lucky.
Chances of them helping you with finding your first job – Nil – zero. (But they can recommend a nice university course that will put you £15k in debt though!)

Facebook - the new career advice site!!

A recently launched YouGov research paper, showed that 62% of young people leaving full-time education haven't decided on a career path. Unfortunately, I think the 'real' is actually higher than that!!  It also states that 62% of them turn to their peers and social networking sites such as Facebook for career advice!!!  (How long will it take Facebook to latch on to that bit of free publicity??)

The reason why - schools and colleges offer little constructive career advice, if any at all. And when they do, the young people have no respect for it because it is usually delivered by teachers or 'experts' that the young people just can't relate to.