In a shocking breach of the rules, over 100 job vacancies posted on the Government’s Universal Jobmatch website are for the same “four or five” jobs.
121 vacancies for computer programmers in Reading are currently posted on the website and all trace back to the same recruitment company, computerfutures.com. On contacting this company it was established that in reality they currently have “four or five” jobs available in the Reading area.
The reason for this duplication is that the same jobs are being posted by different recruitment agencies, all of who appear to be in breach of the rules which state vacancies must not be duplicated. Appalling some of these fake job ads appear to have come from Monster, the company paid millions to run Universal Jobmatch who apparently can’t even keep to their own rules.
This fresh embarrassment comes just two weeks after thousands of job advertisements were taken down from the website after a Channel 4 news investigation found many of the positions were not genuine. Last week The Guardian reported that Universal Jobmatch is scheduled to be scrapped when Monster’s contract expires in 2016.
This will be of little comfort to hundreds of thousands of unemployed people bullied into signing up for a Universal Jobmatch account – sometimes under the threat of benefits being stopped if they refuse. Claimants can then face being forced to apply for vacancies, despite no-one, including the Jobcentre, having any idea whether the jobs actually exist.
The good news is that you still do not have to tick the box giving Jobcentre busybodies access to your Universal Jobmatch account and you cannot be forced to use the website on your home computer anywhere but Jobcentres.
A recent leaflet produced by the DWP (PDF) makes the position clear:
“What if I don’t want cookies to be installed on my device?
“You will not have been required to register with Universal Jobmatch or to use it unless there is a DWP Internet Access Device (IAD) reasonably available for you to use (please speak to your Jobcentre Plus adviser). You can use the DWP IAD if you do not want to accept cookies or have chosen to delete cookies and do not want to accept them again. Cookies have already been accepted on all DWP IADs.
“If you are in receipt of a working age benefit, are using Universal Jobmatch voluntarily and do not want to accept cookies, please speak to your Jobcentre Plus adviser to find out whether an IAD is available for you to use.”
For the most up to date info on your rights visit: http://refuted.org.uk/2013/10/13/jobmatch/
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the void 
Reblogged this on Translation Scrapbook.
Just testing to see if the comments box is working ok, as others have noted in previous post that it is not working for this one.
should be fixed now
And yes Unfunny Joke Machine is rubbish. When I don’t type anything in search its first page of jobs (and probably a few pages on) are Avon Representatives!
it’s always the same problem with uj, the same non jobs advertised ad infinitum. there was a self employed catalogue distributor advertised a few months ago 40 or 50 times in a row. must have been nigh on 3 pages of the same non-job. crazy.
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.
interesting this one
http://www.outsourcedrecruitment.org/Pricing.html
After a very quick check, usual story of a string of ‘recruitment’ sites run from a dress shop!
Anyone like to hazard a reasonable guess as to how many jobs on UJM are anything like genuine?…as opposed to IDS’s spouting (some time ago) that there were around 550,000. My estimate would be more like around the 50,000 mark, and most of those would be for ‘carers’ on the minimum wage (and probably zero hours contracts). And how many people are actually unemployed and chasing these jobs ?…any ‘true’ figures out there? (as opposed to the complete bullshit we get fed!) I would hazard a rough guess, in reality, it’s actually somewhere around the 6,500,000 mark.
I often wonder about this as well. When was the last time you saw a job advertised on the government job site that was a good quality job from a private employer with pension etc, and no strings attached?
Raining, I’ve never seen a single job on UJM which fits that description. As for the pension matter, I’ve worked for 41 years (unfortunately with three bouts of unemployment since 2010) and a pension has just never been part of the deal in any job I’ve ever had.
I would guess less than 40,000 jobs been chased by over 5 million people looking for work
Idi Amin Smith fabricated his life history, so he thinks it is alright to fabricate fake jobs on UJM and then expect us to apply for them. The slaphead is a fool to himself.
Reblogged this on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR.
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs.
When it was built they thought every employer who posted on there would want you to apply through UJ (click the apply button thus recording your application on UJ) however it just hasn’t worked put like that most want you to apply through another site, get diverted or email or phone.
Most jobcenteres still want you to fill in a diary as they cant even be bothered with the hassle of signing in anymore.
I remember having words with a jobs warehouse about them Spamming UJM, every day something like 9 pages all the same, then the next day the same jobs over and over.. they didnt like the word “spamming”..
Eric, how did you go about ‘having words’ with them? I would like to do the same. It’s something we should all do, or all of us that can be bothered, to bring a halt to this pile of shit.
Well i mentioned on my twitter, i was sick of this company spamming the UJM site over and over the same jobs..then they got in touch after reading my tweet saying it was unfair. and i could speak to them on the phone.. they were very dismissive they said it was nothing they could do.. but you can sign up for the other sites this company runs.. basically a scam
It isn’t that clear: Our JCP has no usable IADs now, and if one got fixed I wouldn’t use it for fear they’d access my email. ID thieves used my details from UJM to order stuff in my name and run up debts. Have not been forced to (after refusing order to) lie about my personal details, the only way I could re-register with UJM after it kicked me out. Other month it said my account was deleted and they’ve stopped emailing me directly. However it’s been still sending out automatic job applications pretending to be from me, I’ve seen replies from some employers I never applied to.
Other week I told JCP it sends job offers from USA, which are mostly scams as I never did the application and US-located interviews they said I did, and it never says what the job is or who the employers are or what they make/do. This week I told JCP UJM has been deluging me with porn
(heterosexual in nature), I said what if a family got it and their kids viewed it? what if a strict Christian/Muslim or someone anti-sex got sent it? what if not all the women in the porn are fully consenting? or a female rape victim or a lesbian got sent it, seen as pretty offensive to get sent?
JCP said they’d look into it. I know UJM caused this, as some of the porn from the same senders had subject lines claiming to be about job interviews/offers… and there wasn’t anyone else like that I could have given my details to. Only UJM and only under duress. I HATE UJM! They’re bound to close ranks and blame me. But I still know it was them selling on my details to porn, scammers, spammers, and downright dodgy gits.
You need to stop being negative
Cover letters and speculative letters will get unresponsive employers to fall over themselves to offer you a job
You need to stop being ridiculous.
606 job applications for 50 jobs at Waitrose in Leek
http://www.leek-news.co.uk/600-job-applications-50-jobs-Waitrose-Leek/story-20827898-detail/story.html
Maybe they can all be given meaningful employment for 30 seconds each!
Clearly IDS and Osborne failed O-Level Maths and Remedial Number Skills.
The only way an employer will be able to find a positive use for thousands of speculative letters and cover letters is if the employer is a paper recycling plant.
Or if there’s ever a toilet paper shortage. Though first stop (before using sanctions letters and UJM or Jobpoint printouts) would be using IDS’s horrible face!
You need to stop being hilarious …
Cover letters and spec letters are one way of job searching – employers will use this method more so as it costs them a lot of money to advertise jobs in local papers or online. I have done the spec approach myself and find that it works perfectly. No employer has ever rubbished me or refused me an interview or application form on the basis of calling round to ask if there is any potential vacancies. Don’t knock this spec system unless you have tried it yourself.
Ingeus Harlow, ‘unresponsive employers’ whatever do you mean?
I grant you, that, sending CVs to targeted employers, those which you have the right skills for, may respond. But pissing of employers with CVs just to meet YOUR TARGETS is a waste of time. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH JOBS TO GO AROUND
Not really a waste of time for you personally, because you can legitimately write those spec letters down in your job logs as jobsearch – every little helps as Tesco/Tosco would say!
Obi, I see where you are coming from and I do it often. However, imagine, that, you have sent an employer a CV hoping that they will not respond and they invite you for an interview? Nightmare. I am fucking sick of targets. If JCP would only leave me alone, I would find a job. Instead, the constant need to meet their targets instead of really focusing on job applications applicable to my skills is draining. What to do?
The joke centre minus is obsessed nowadays with meeting monthly sanction targets, form-filling and box ticking. The sooner all of these depressing places are closed down the better for all.
What good are these places now? They are doing away with the public phone points, the job points and physical benefit claims. Every service they used to offer in person is going online only. ”Want to make a new claim after losing your job?” ”You can only now do this on our website and also arrange a claim-start interview with one of our advisors online too”
Yes, and this system will be open to fraud and abuse from internet criminals stealing people’s names and addresses and making fraudulent benefit claims for cash gains…
Ingeus Harlow.. Rubbish.. Imagine the many many many thousands of people all sending spec letters and cover letters, How long will it take to read all those thousands hours that could be done actually working and earning. 95% of ALL employers who get the spec letters will dump them into the filing tray call the bin.. I
Reblogged this on glynismillward189.
Ok you post all this online you never advocate more direct action WHY ? The time is near when people say enough is enough. The riots will reappear the elite will not fall but be pushed back I want to see the elite fail but not humanity
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2
@ betsy234
It’s probably illegal to specifically advocate direct action, you have to be careful what you say online as this is a Fascist State and you will disappear.
If you are that lucky, Iain Duncan Hitler will come calling round your house one night at the stroke of midnight dressed as the grim reaper…
This all adds to the reasons for people not to use UJ for their search and rely on other sites. UJ is a cluster of fuck and the sooneer it is scapped the better.
UJM has been the same since its conception, I dont use it anymore, as long as you are meeting the jc’s criteria you can use any mode of jobseeking, just have to log it on UJM!
I don’t log anything on UJM. I don’t even use it.
You could be setting yourself up for an automatic sanction for refusal to use that website. Part of the conditions for receiving JSA is that UJM must be used for how many days per week your JSA agreement states. And that jobs applied for on UJM must also be recorded into the diary as well –
* Job vacancy applied for
* date of application
* UJM Ref. number of that particular job.
Not writing down this info can lead to automatic sanction referral. I don’t know about other JCP’s but this is the flaff I have to accept from my own. Anything I apply for online must also go into my diary. Nothing has been said to me yet about JCP booklets being withdrawn at any time, unlike having to make a physical new benefit claim in person – all of this can only be done online now.
Fen Tiger, I have to look at UJM 6 times a fortnight. I only apply for jobs that have a direct email address to the said business. If no direct emails are stated, I do not apply. UJM is about looking at jobs, not necessarily applying for them.
I don’t know about your JCP or what is on your JSA agreement, but my own JCP stated on my JSA agreement that I have to search & apply for jobs on UJM, CV Library and Indeed.co.uk.
If I said to my lame JCP advisor that I would only apply for jobs via e-mail process only and not by also cold-calling companies or direct application via UJM apply button, I would then be seen by my JCP as restricting my availability and not actively seeking work – and therefore be placed onto illegal sanction for not doing enough to meet the conditions I am placed in.
I use all known methods to actively apply for jobs that are relevant to my JSA agreement; and I certainly don’t apply for any old job simply just to meet my impossible 16 steps per week quota.
Unless you can agree ‘0’ times/week.
– As in “I already use x, y and z job sites /other means of looking for work and these work best for me/i have some reservations (!) about the lovely UJ site”. It is not an easy balancing act. Like everything else JCP, there’s one rule that’s not really a rule but they say it is The Rule. They are instantly unhappy about refusal to use and switch straight from talking about applying for jobs to making print outs etc. etc. until they are blue in the face (about 4 minutes). Not long ago, advisors, up to manager level, insisted that would no longer accept “just” written records of job search activity (“it’s not proof”) but as FJCP says below, it is not anywhere written down that there is any one set way of providing evidence of job search activity (not yet – ?). They didn’t issue a jobseekers direction or raise a doubt in the end – or do any frogmarching to their printers (they alluded to the possibility but didn’t do it after a one hour and 30 minutes ‘debate’).
I made an account and – also without logging in – would sometimes look at the ‘jobs’ on offer there so as to be able to say (truthfully) “I have looked at UJ” so trying to not keep it a potential sanction-source/main job search source.
UC: Use (with great) Care.
*it might have just been 45 mins or an hour not one hour 30 … but when reasoned and unreasoned arguments, threats and more (veiled) threats don’t seem to get the desired result, keeping you in there, going over the same ground pointlessly until you either get up and walk out (self-sanction) or concede to their demand(s) (“It’s your own time you’re wasting; I’m here all day …”) seems to be the next step.
“Daring” to arrive at school not in the ‘correct’ uniform/six minutes late or speaking when not having been spoken to (!) weirdly have turned out to be useful pre-cursers for JCP-2014. Those draconian rules and Dickensian environment – had a point after all … they said we’d appreciate it one day & it’d be good practice for later life …
@ Shirley – Don’t forget the neatly written homework/2 page essay side of things (jobseeker’s diary), the essay on “What I did at the weekend (and the rest of the week as well)” Answer in every case to avoid sanction: Jobsearched!
I will search UJ for ‘any job’ going.
I will search UJ all day and all night, or die trying.
I will search UJ until IDS tells me to stop; He Is Never Wrong.
Life had very little (or not much) meaning ’til Our Grate & (vain)Glorious
IDS unveiled His Sanction Machine from Hell.
How can any (sentient) being ever ‘doubt’ –
“He is the One True Dipstick”.
@ Shirley – He is the Initial Dipstick Source. Write out your mantra above 1000 times, and put it into practice 10,000 times, and you will succeed (in becoming mentally unwell) – but don’t worry – the “powers that be” will declare you fit for work.
fjcp, there’s no time to lose – the devil makes work for IDS’ hands to do.
I’m still using my paper jobseekers diary, and have never recorded a jobsearch on UJM. I have also never jobsearched on UJM by logging in, although I have to log in just to check for any saved jobs, and sometimes have to log in to it to apply.
When I was ON UJM it did not allow me to record a jobsearch, alter my profile (though THEY altered my profile and personal details!), or apply for any jobs. It’s shit.
If it was a person, any ‘reasonable man in the street’ (legal term!) would have by now nutted it in the face.
One of the reasons that there are a disproportionately large number of bogus spam jobs advertised on UJM is because genuine employers for the most part don’t choose to advertise on it. The reason? Because anybody advertising a post on UJM usually gets buried under an avalanche of applications from all sorts of unsuitable people, who are applying in full knowledge that they won’t get the job simply to satisfy the Jobcentre that they are sticking to their claimant commitment. Wading through dozens, hundreds or even thousands of applications to shortlist people for interview is hugely time consuming and therefore most employer’s these days use private employment agencies to make the first cut for them and only bother to consider a small number of applications to lead to interviews for any vacancy.
It seems perverse to me to compel anybody looking for a job to sign up for and use UJM when it is ridden with danger, riddled with garbage, and unlikely under any circumstances to lead even to an interview since most candidates applying through UJM will be shuffled out of the pack immediately and their details never considered.
Could any other government possibly have failed so spectacularly?
No good in sending written complaints to UJM via their contact e-mail address given on the website as they don’t take any notice of their customers.
I moaned at them for carrying loads of scam jobs from x-jobs.com, but nothing was done about removing that dodgy x-jobs content until TWO WEEKS after I bitched over seeing scam vacancies.
You also have to ask THEM to delete your account; you can do it yourself. All you can do is get rid of your Gateway number the UJM account remains for eighteen months until, they say, it is automatically deleted.
When Unfunny Joke Machine has been officially announced for the scrapheap, then will I request my account be closed down. Until then, I can’t as my JSA agreement states that I must actively use UJM 3 times per week by applying for relevant jobs on there.
If I ask at the JCP for them to close my account, I will be seen as in-active and my JSA claim will be thrown into doubt pending sanction or something worse.
Whichever way I look at it, I am being stuffed and mocked at by the fucking lunatics behind the desks at the JCP and WPP. Smug cunts they are.
The Tories’ so-called ‘Welfare Reforms’ are a monumental bollocks of an utter shambolic cock-up par excellence, yet Ed Milipede says bugger all ! Labour should be down on them like a ton of bricks, not pricks. Fucking pathetic. This bunch of clowns should be made to stand down immediately. For fuck’s sake wake up Labour and DO something, call for a NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE you useless bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Landless Peasant, you have a great way with words LOL
🙂 It’s that Eton education…
🙂
landless
call for a national general strike from Labour LoL, they are sidelining the unions so are not likely to call for a general strike.
The Daily Fail are carrying this ‘news story’ –
”450,000 fall in households where no one has a job: Drop in benefit-dependent homes comes after Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms to make it less lucrative to live on the State”
Not bloody likely. 450,000 people have in reality been shoved on the WP for two years, making it easy for Iain Duncan Hitler to cheat and fabricate the real unemployment figures.
presumably this comes on account of 1.5million new jobs being created in fantasyworld
Bloody hell, a woman committed suicide in my local ASDA this morning. Tragic. I’d have done it in the Jobcentre.
It won’t achieve anything, just one less giro to pay out. Keep kicking against the pricks.
That is terrible! Do you know what happened? I bet it’s related to benefit sanctions
Paranoid much? There is no reason to think EVERY suicide in the UK is related to sanctions; I’ll probably face one this afternoon but don’t intend to off myself just because I’m not going to dodge a litter picking community sentence! People who off themselves aren’t exactly fighting the man either merely giving them what they want; one less giro to pay out. Next up, posting lyrics of Killing Joke lyrics to really tell the government what you digitally think…
Minimising the distress that has driven individuals to take their own lives is really dodgy ground I think.
To highlight that not every person who commits suicide, did it because of sanctions, serves a second purpose, other than reminding us of a fact. That purpose is to subtly diminish the loss of those who simply couldn’t fight the system for their lives any longer.
Yes, you may have the strength to brush off the threats and sanctions. You are in your situation, no one elses. You don’t know what drives people to suicide. Implying that people are weak because they didn’t come up to your expectations of warrior is pretty offensive.
So, all those who have committed suicide due to sanctions and the relentless bullying by the DWP and JC+ should have just pulled their socks up and thought themselves back to full vigour? Yeah, ‘cos it’s really all that simple isn’t it?
Pissing on the dead, those who simply couldn’t make it because they were at the end of their particular tether is a horrible thing to do.
According to google no one even knows who she was.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/general-news/video-horror-as-woman-kills-herself-in-shipley-asda-1-6520007
Then neither do the DWP, next!
Labour party in disarray over benefit Cap this pm in parliament what a joke Reeves is and the party to be in the situation were their work&pension policy ideas are shambolic
In all fairness UG is half decent if your advisor allows you to use it as a method of merely recording your job search/activities. It saves on toner for one which was becoming a problem post work programme/A4e. However as a job search tool not so much…
i was sanctioned after being told to make an account on there.. because the email address i used was along the lines of ujmisbobbins@hotmail.co.uk. apparently it was inappropriate and an employer could see it? i then questioned why the adviser said the email address used would be hidden from any potential employer lying cunts, i just closed the jsa claim and went on esa, they not bothered me since,
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How about ujmarescammers@ripoff.co.uk ?
idssuckshorsedicks@wankfare.com ?
departmentofmurder@jcp.gov.uk ?
jobmatchisshite@slavery.org.uk ?
pileofdeadtories@westminster.assassination.nongov.disorg.uk ?
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