Phoning a Jobcentre to offer work

[groak]

We need a couple of people. I googled the local DWP office. The number had been discontinued and a recording gave the right number. I phoned the right number and, once past the obligatory menu obstacle course, a human told me it was the wrong number for employers and gave me the right number. I phoned the right number and, once past the obligatory menu obstacle course, a human told me he'd need my details. Roughly 5 - 10 minutes into this something about 'minimum wage' was mentioned. I told the human the jobs were 'commission only'. The human then told me I would have to make a written declaration in relation to 'minimum wage'. I told the human that I really couldn't be bothered with this any longer as it was just a carry-on. It IS just a carry-on. 5 minutes later I told an admin person to put a 'staff wanted' ad on Gumtree. Within an hour of the ad appearing we'd had 3 decent calls.

fkk the Jobcentre. Waste of time.

[siscar]

It's branch of Government, what do you expect?

Minimum wage is an issue though, even commission only people have to be paid the minimum wage regardless of whether they have sold anything.

[odyssey2200]

Sadly I have been on both sides of this.

Trying to place an ad for staff.
I gave up as they seemed to be deliberately making it as hard as possible.

Trying to sign on, having been made redundant.
We could same the deficit just by sacking these fking Employment Prevention Officers.

[WhoseGeneration]

siscar said:

Minimum wage is an issue though, even commission only people have to be paid the minimum wage regardless of whether they have sold anything.

You sure?
The OP wasn't really clear on this but he might have been looking for self employed agents wanting to add his activity to their current portfolio of reperesentation.

[WhoseGeneration]

groak said:

We need a couple of people. I googled the local DWP office. The number had been discontinued and a recording gave the right number. I phoned the right number and, once past the obligatory menu obstacle course, a human told me it was the wrong number for employers and gave me the right number. I phoned the right number and, once past the obligatory menu obstacle course, a human told me he'd need my details. Roughly 5 - 10 minutes into this something about 'minimum wage' was mentioned. I told the human the jobs were 'commission only'. The human then told me I would have to make a written declaration in relation to 'minimum wage'. I told the human that I really couldn't be bothered with this any longer as it was just a carry-on. It IS just a carry-on. 5 minutes later I told an admin person to put a 'staff wanted' ad on Gumtree. Within an hour of the ad appearing we'd had 3 decent calls.

fkk the Jobcentre. Waste of time.

Seriously, contact your local MP detailing this,(don't mention your voting record), they will forward this to the relevant Minister.
Oh, your MP could be SNP, so might laugh.

[siscar]

WhoseGeneration said:

siscar said:

Minimum wage is an issue though, even commission only people have to be paid the minimum wage regardless of whether they have sold anything.

You sure?
The OP wasn't really clear on this but he might have been looking for self employed agents wanting to add his activity to their current portfolio of reperesentation.

If they are employees then minimum wage applies, if they are independent agents with other sources of income it doesn't. But Id guess that they are employees, you wouldn't use the job centre to find agents.

[Deva Link]

odyssey2200 said:

Sadly I have been on both sides of this.

Trying to place an ad for staff.
I gave up as they seemed to be deliberately making it as hard as possible.

It can't be that difficult - thousands of companies seem to manage it.

[Jackleman]

I went through the same BS last year when trying to recruit some sales people, we offered quite a fair package and didn't hear anything in terms of applications.

Commission only is not legal from what I understand.

[WhoseGeneration]

siscar said:

you wouldn't use the job centre to find agents.

Why not, do the job centres prohibit this?
If they do, I'm sure our current Government would want to change that.

[FraserLFA]

I never like using the job centre.

Their employees are mostly not bothered about finding work. Some are committed, but those are the people that tend to find you after they get off their arse to find work.

[Jackleman]

One benefit of using the Job Centre Plus website to find jobs is that most of the jobs are actually genuine compared to Monster and the likes which are riddled with fake jobs from the scumball recruitment agency crowd just harvesting CVs

[voyds9]

We tried using the job centre once. All the CV's we got were job centre ones (they take the applicants details and fill the forms in for them). More than one applicant couldn't write their own names without crossing it out and starting again. This was for an admin position.

Needless to say the position went unfilled.

[spaximus]

We had an add refused because we put driver 23 years of age or 5 years experiance. This was deemed illegal under age discrimination. Pointed out this was because the insurers would not cover any one outside this.

queue long conversations etc etc and yes they were wrong they could take it. Took so long we had already employed someone.

It is the PC based idiots which is getting in the way of work.

[Sticks.]

spaximus said:

It is the PC based idiots which is getting in the way of work.

Which is govt and management rather than staff I suspect.

[fido]

spaximus said:

We had an add refused because we put driver 23 years of age or 5 years experiance. This was deemed illegal under age discrimination. Pointed out this was because the insurers would not cover any one outside this.

Could you not have left these details out of the advert .. but ask them in the preliminary phone interview? Bit of lateral thinking required with DoleCentrePlus.

[mondeoman]

Jackleman said:

One benefit of using the Job Centre Plus website to find jobs is that most of the jobs are actually genuine compared to Monster and the likes which are riddled with fake jobs from the scumball recruitment agency crowd just harvesting CVs

Why on earth would anyone harvest CVs nowadays? There are so many people out of work you only have to mention the sniff of a job and you get flooded with applicants.

[okgo]

siscar said:

It's branch of Government, what do you expect?

Minimum wage is an issue though, even commission only people have to be paid the minimum wage regardless of whether they have sold anything.

No, they don't.

[Busa_Rush]

Many years ago I tried using a jobcentre to fill some vacancies at work and gave up - 15 years ago all we got were people who were told to report for interview or loose their dole money. I don't think many genuine job seekers used the job centres.

Agencies were much better, filtered "applicants" and saved us a lot of work . . . but cost more.

[spikeyhead]

mondeoman said:

Jackleman said:

One benefit of using the Job Centre Plus website to find jobs is that most of the jobs are actually genuine compared to Monster and the likes which are riddled with fake jobs from the scumball recruitment agency crowd just harvesting CVs

Why on earth would anyone harvest CVs nowadays? There are so many people out of work you only have to mention the sniff of a job and you get flooded with applicants.

At the highly skilled end of the spectrum it's still happenning.

[mondeoman]

spikeyhead said:

mondeoman said:

Jackleman said:

One benefit of using the Job Centre Plus website to find jobs is that most of the jobs are actually genuine compared to Monster and the likes which are riddled with fake jobs from the scumball recruitment agency crowd just harvesting CVs

Why on earth would anyone harvest CVs nowadays? There are so many people out of work you only have to mention the sniff of a job and you get flooded with applicants.

At the highly skilled end of the spectrum it's still happenning.

Jeez - what a dumb practice.