Jobsearch Fun

Signing session...I've lost count; the days blur into one now. It was my second time with the advisor assigned at the 13 week period. Another waste of time. The JC+ approach, mechanism and system is just too flawed.
The interview proceeds after I turn up ten minutes late. Fortunately my JC isn't staffed with people that want to stop your benefits for a week because of such things, especially when they are caused by bus timetables.
The formality of signing done the inevitable search on the system begins. This is just ridiculous: it says right there on my search record that I use JC+ website every day. I do it every morning; it's pretty easy to do especially as half the time it comes up with nothing. What is the point of asking me to look again? Either accept that I have done this, or don't ask me to keep a record! One one hand they want you to develop self confidence to apply and procure work, but on the other they are quite happy to enforce a policy of complete mistrust.
However their in house system isn't the same as that used by the website (and the job points that 'customers' are advised to use). I quickly notice vacancies that weren't advertised on the website - not that my pointing out how flawed the website is gains me any credibility. They just don't believe what you say.
As the search proceeds I feel the pressure to accept the invitation to apply for three jobs. Two of which are completely unsuitable. One's a retail management job that will be impossible to get to to say nothing of the level of responsibility involved that I don't feel comfortable with nor do I desire professionally. I'm not interested in a career in retail, but the JC aren't interested in hearing that because a job's a job. No support for anything that might be suitable or that I might be interested in (how about working from home?).
The second vacancy is for the library which wouldn't be too bad but for the fact that you have to deal with a great deal of screaming kids, especially over the summer, as they have lots of reading schemes for kids. Now don't misunderstand me: I think these things are great and anything tha encourages reading in kids is worthwhile - I, on the other hand, have no interest in dealing with kids. I find it difficult, I don't have kids (nor any desire to) and have never ever felt comfortable, as an adult, in their company, for instance when I visit friends that have them. Besides the job requires you be available to cover in libraries throughout the district. Due to the rubbish transport provision this isn't possible.
The third vacancy was another of the usual agency adverts. Digging around I find that it was (and I've seen this before) copy and pasted directly from another jobsearch website; one of the meta sites that gathers jobs from various agencies in the local area. This practise is ridiculous: the website team have simply scoured the Internet for sites like this, copied the text and uploaded them to give the impression they were provided by the employer directly. This is creating the wrong impression about the actual number of vacancies currently on offer (if the government are counting jobs advertised by the DWP as their source for example). There's no guarantee it's even a real job anyway as so many of these silly agency jobs aren't. I don't want to work for an agency and I don't want to work as a 'customer service administrator' (which is about all the advert tells me). But what choice do I have. I sent an email to find out about the job at least.
So there we are; no support, no interest and as usual no help. Just another routine scanning of the local list of adverts on the system and that's it. How anyone can think this approach is worthwhile is beyond me. No discussion of anything at all. I mentioned that I wasn't terribly comfortable with the third vacancy when it popped up (and the advisor 'nudging' my interest of course, so you feel compelled to apply). All i got was 'well admin is on your list of jobs' (i have no experience of admin at all, nor any desire to do it, but you have to pick three different types of work and are then held to that no matter what).
Ridiculous; we are all individual. This isn't an exception nor a pithy Monty P quote. We ARE such and as such our needs in work are equally individual. Just beccause other potential colleagues in the workplace might be able to manage, doesn't mean I can - or you can. I would have been more interested in discussing working from home (which we briefly touched upon last session), but the only game in town is 'let's look on the computer'. That's it; it's a ridiculous approach, utterly reactive, utterly inept, and no hope at all. I have skills, I have interests, dare I say I even have talents, now why are they being ignored?