Our useless "job centres"

I recently re-watched “The Full Monty,” which I saw when it came out back in 1997. At the center of these men’s lives was the British version of our local Division of Labor and Training office. Theirs was simply referred to as the “jobclub.” In Stinkassachusetts, it’s called The One Stop Career Center. In Rhode Island, it’s called netWORKri. Watching this movie reminded me of the horrible experience I had here in the US with these dismal and useless entities.

Stinkassachusetts, Part 1

I visited the Norwood location in July 2013. At this point, I had accumulated about 500 rejections over the previous nine months, so panic was definitely starting to set in. The only "assistance" they had to offer was a bunch of workshops that were booked for weeks. The only one that had an opening was the one on writing cover letters, so I signed up for it. I figured that even if I don’t learn anything new here it might be good to get out of the house and maybe meet some people.

The “instructor” spent the majority of the workshop showing us how to properly apply for a job advertised in the newspaper. I am not fucking kidding here. He also exhibited a great deal of cluelessness; for example, after spending a majority of the class discussing newspaper ads and mailing printed letters, he finally got around to discussing responding to job ads via email. According to him, you are supposed to put both your cover letter your resume as an attachment, and in the body of your email state, "Attached are my cover letter and resume." Are you kidding me? No, you put your damned cover letter in the email body. Attention spans are at an all-time low, and chances are the recipient will be too damned lazy to open any attachment. You have mere seconds to make an impression, to lose those seconds expecting them to go through the extra hassle of opening an attachment is just plain idiotic. Then, he went on about how you need to be careful about what version of Word to save your document as. I finally couldn’t bear the stupidity any longer and said, "Excuse me, but if you save it as a PDF you won’t need to worry about word processor versions." His reply was, "What if they don’t have Acrobat?" Rrrrrrrriiiiiiight, because Acrobat is one of those really rare obscure programs that you've gotta pay for! Good grief. I left and never went back.

Part 2

Despite that gawd-awful experience (probably because I was growing desperate), I decided to give this institution a second chance, and visited the Quincy location in April 2014, thinking that maybe a different location that's closer to the city might serve me a little better (it didn't).

I made an appointment and arrived with the secretarial/administrative resume and cover letter I had attempted to patch together using pieces of my now-defunct design career. I was introduced to a woman who was assigned to me, and I sat down at her desk and briefly explained my situation. I dryly confessed that I was probably going to commit suicide come September if nothing comes my way -- I was merely speaking matter-of-factly and certainly not looking for sympathy as I’ve learned nobody gives a damn when you’re suicidal. Sure enough, she got nasty with me and lectured me about how her situation is no better, something along the lines of "Hey, I lost my career, too, and now look where I am, do you think I wanna be here?" She agreed to have a look at my resume and cover letter, and I returned the following week at which point she presented me with the rewritten versions. Two things that I recall were: 1) the resume was NOT formatted for an ATS, it had columns, bullets, decorative separator lines, etc., all things that will make an ATS reject it immediately because it can't be scanned; and 2) the cover letter salutation was "Dear Hiring Manager." Dear Hiring Manager??? Um, no, the proper salutation for a business letter when you don’t know the recipient’s name is Ladies and Gentlemen for when the letter goes to a group, and Dear Sir/Madam when it goes to a single unknown-gender title.

I walked out and never went back. After a month of serious soul-searching, I enrolled in a CELTA certification course and began to prepare for a new life overseas.

Rhode Island

Recall that back in August 2015 my second gig at Fidelity had come to an unexpected end, leaving me once again without a job. For the first time in my life, I filed for unemployment benefits, and once again I began preparing to leave America to teach English overseas. I immediately received a summons from the state that I had to attend an orientation at one of their netWORKri centers as a prerequisite to receiving benefits. I arrived with printouts of the 1,500 job rejection emails I had received over the previous three years just to see if it would elicit some kind of reaction (it didn’t, not one person acknowledged the fucktardness of my situation). During the orientation they explained that I had to apply for three jobs a week and they gave me a double-sided sheet of paper on which to enter this information (company name/address, date applied, did I get an interview, did I get hired). Secondly, I had to log into their website every week and complete the “did you look for a job / did you get a job” questionnaire in order to continue receiving benefits. 

After the orientation, I sat with some guy at a computer who said he's going to help me get a job. LOLOLOLOL! I said, look, dude, here are 1,500 job rejections, there is NO hope for finding me a job here. He said, "Well, that's all gonna change now because I'm here and I’m gonna help you." I held back my laughter at this (did he really believe it, or was he just good at reciting the same line over and over to others like me?).

Here's what he did for me. He showed me the job posting page on their website. I glanced over his shoulder and saw a list full of jobs that I had already applied for and already been rejected from months earlier. When I pointed at one of them and said that I didn’t even get a phone screening despite being 100% qualified, he asked me the most idiotic question: “Did you call them?” Newsflash, dude who hasn't searched for work in twenty years: It’s NOT 1995 anymore. Not only is there NO way to even locate a phone number or contact person to “call,” but many companies will blacklist you for doing this (it's also not possible to locate a hiring manager for a job that doesn't exist).

He then went over the piece of paper I had to complete itemizing my job applications. And, that was it. Some help, huh? Yeah, just apply online like I’ve been doing for the past three years, that'll do it! Because these 1,500 rejections (on which he wouldn't even comment) don't mean a thing. Oh, but LOOK! Now I've got this fucking sheet of paper where I'm putting the name of the company and address and checking a box saying "Hired? Y/N" – oh, wow, THIS IS REALLY GONNA MAKE A DIFFERENCE! This is gonna make companies take notice of me!!!!! Lookie, Mr. Hiring Manager (*snark*), I’m applying for your advertised job along with 500 other people but I’m using a piece of paper to mark that I applied!

The final act of silliness I had to perform in order to "earn" my unemployment benefits was to attend one of their job-hunting workshops. None of the titles looked worthy of my time – like the usual “how to write a resume” nonsense (I had already hired a professional resume writer to make my resume keyword-compliant, and I was still getting rejected) – but as I had no choice I randomly chose the job interview workshop. Once again, it was full of advice straight out of 1995 along with a few modern tidbits of utter nonsense, like, "Be sure to dress professionally for your telephone interview!" For those attendees who chimed in with bad stories of inconsiderate and incompetent interviewers, the presenter had no advice to offer, further confirmation that “just shut up and take the abuse” is the rule to live by today.

When I returned a month later as required with my completed sheet listing my job applications, I sat with a different person from the guy I met with the first time – what happened to my personal advocate assigned to me and who cared so much about helping me? – and explained that not only did I not get a single interview from any of these jobs but I know for a fact that none of them even reviewed my portfolio (I explained how I have something called visitor tracking on my website). She just listened without commenting, looked over the list, and that was the end of that.

Did anyone in this crummy place actually DO anything to help me here? Like, I dunno, maybe get on the telephone and fucking CALL some of these companies on my list and ask them why they couldn't be bothered to even look at my applications? Oh, heavens, that would require a little effort. Remember, I'm the lazy one here. I'm the one who needs to be humiliated and reminded that it's all my fault that Fidelity fucked me over.

The final infuriating conclusion to this disgraceful display of state government uselessness was the summons to jury duty I received one month later (the court confirmed my name got into their system because I had the nerve to file for unemployment).