Sometimes, I should pay more attention to my friends.
Soon after I started this blog, a former work colleague engaged in job-hunting contacted me to suggest I should write an article about Universal Jobsmatch, the Government-sponsored job-search website. My friend's concern was that it required the user to put a great deal of personal information by way of their CV into the public domain with apparently scant security, since there appeared to be few checks on who could use the site as an 'employer'.
Distracted by other more obvious issues, I failed to follow up this lead. It therefore fell to others to spot the flaws in this system, from the benign posting of humorous fake jobs to highlight the security glitches - MI6 hitmen, drugs mules and pirate crew to name but a few - the posting of real jobs for escorts (with the proviso 'must enjoy sex') and most recently Channel 4's expose of the scale of fake jobs set up simply to create web traffic for profit. Additionally, Frank Field MP has highlighted cases from his Merseyside constituency where job applicants using Universal Jobsmatch have been the victims of scams demanding up-front payments to secure jobs that never existed.
It does seem that anything involving a computer, Iain Duncan Smith and the word 'Universal' is likely to end in tears, a point nicely parodied here:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2014/03/24/iain-duncan-smith-to-simplify-all-his-cock-ups-into-one-universal-cock-up/.
And indeed, the most recent leaks suggest that Universal Jobsmatch is being added to the long list of Government IT procurement products designated 'not fit for purpose' and is destined for the scrap heap. It's all a far cry from the claims the DWP made to 'stakeholders' last autumn about how this was becoming employers' method of choice for recruitment - in fact, many employers eschew it completely since they receive so many inappropriate applications from Jobseekers desperate to achieve their tally and avoid sanctions.
So you might think that Jobcentres would take a sympathetic view if claimants adopt a 'thanks, but no thanks' approach to this particular 'step' towards securing work, and stop handing down sanctions to people struggling with it or wary of it for entirely legitimate reasons. But training material recently received from the DWP on the 'claimant commitment' for Jobseekers Allowance contains a surprising revelation. As part of the concept of 'Day One Compliance', whereby jobseekers will have to prove themselves to be just that from the moment they make their claim, a precondition of making an on-line JSA claim will be that they already have a CV - and have registered with Universal Jobsmatch!
Rather than taking a step back from this fiasco, the DWP are in the process of embedding it still deeper into the JSA system. As a consequence, claims will be delayed or refused and claimants will be sanctioned for failing to use this discredited application. One can only hope that they will appeal in droves and that tribunals will support them, as the 'claimant commitment' should not be about forcing people to expose themselves to fraud and exploitation, nor to having their time wasted in a vain attempt to save the DWP's face.
