Did you have to do 2 straight away or were you on 1 hour and then over time it got boosted up to 2 hours?

Just thought I'd post back and post a bit of insight. So this week I've got to visit the WP building twice: * Once for the "mandatory" job searching * Once for a general interview w/ my advisor, who I cannot stand already So once I got there, I was told behind one of the men at the glass, "Please take a seat and your advisor will come on over and bla bla", I did and I was sat down for like 20+ minutes before she came over and said that I needed to be on the computers near the sign in sheet (In a degrading manner, trying to make me feel like **** because of whatever reason), I did not know this, I thought she was going to walk through some stuff with me, so I was not going to stand for that, so I simply stated in a loud but firm manner, "Right, well the guy over there told me that you would be informed that I was here and you'd be walking me through the Job Search progress on these computers, I've been sat here for 20 minutes and it's not on." I found out that I'm required to each week, come into the WP building and job search using their computers for 1 hour, I don't understand this what so ever. It dumbfounds me how I have to do this in their building rather than at home, it's not even supervised, I could literally come in, sit on the computers, do nothing and leave after the hour is up, I just don't get it.

You know like there are "mandatory" job searches every week or whatever, does anyone know how long these usually last? As I would rather not spend hours there when I could be using those hours at home and doing more efficient job searches with a better computer, better tools and better internet, along /w a quiet environment for when arranging interviews/phone calls etc. So yeah, any one who has been to these things in the past, what is the usual time frame that they go on for?

I'm actually a Web Developer and not a graphic designer, so that's that. But Your comments are quite rude and as Estellyn pointed out, you being a troll? I don't understand where it's coming from. Completely false, I stated that when in minimum wage jobs I would lose focus on my other work, my freelance work, my web development work and that would make me question if I'm doing the right thing being in x line of work instead of y. I finished university in 2013 and since then I have been involved in Web Development jobs (both small and large) and also had other part-time jobs along the way, but I wont be addressing any of your further comments, you're just rude for no other reason than to be rude. You have a nice day now. Got my time at the WP tomorrow to "search for jobs", so that should be moderately interesting. Let's hope it goes well, I really cannot be bothered going due to the fact that I am literally going to be applying for jobs that I've already applied for, lol.

Don't you find that if you get yourself involved in a job that isn't entirely what you want to do, that you end up losing focus/determination for the actual job that you wanted to get? I used to work for a company, nothing big, it was just a simple admin job and I started to lose overall focus regarding my Web Development jobs, I didn't want to work full-time + work part-time for myself because I then would literally have no time left for myself, I'd work 9-5 and then if I did have a job that needed completing I would either a.) have to have some food when I'd get in and then crack on til around midnight and then go bed. b.) Not do it and potentially lose out on money I could be making and experience I could be getting or c.) Leave it until the weekend thus delaying my client, so in the end I just lost a lot of focus for my hobby and my passion and I just stopped doing freelance work and going for interviews regarding web development. I just feel that the WP do not care about your happiness, they do not care what job you take, they could have you cleaning toilets and it would be a win for them, they do not have the best interests at heart or that's the impression that I'm currently getting anyway.

Did you get a job working for the Work Programme, is that why you're so annoyed? But no seriously, who are you talking to? Me, Mr. P, whom? I don't know. One question that I will answer though, is the following: Why would any one given the choice want to have to work a minimum wage job? I know I wouldn't, when I personally apply for jobs, I look at it like as if it were a Tier list, at the top would be the jobs that I want to apply for, the jobs in my trade (Web Development, Web design, UI/UX design/development, etc), after that it would be Computer engineering jobs, assist. technical roles (technician roles) etc and then finally the min. wage jobs, the retail jobs, the online/over the phone support jobs etc. Now while I'm pretty sure that if I applied for nothing but minimum wage jobs I could have a job within the month but I would rather try and get a job in something that I know I'm more than qualified in than work at something, get crap pay (minimum wage) and be miserable in/at, you know what I mean? Maybe you're happy doing what you're doing, but that's just not me.

Right okay, well I've got an Interview my advisor on Wednesday and a job search on Tuesday, so I'll bring up all of these points then, it just makes no sense what so ever. I totally agree, I'm all for jobs being put forward for me to apply for and potentially get interviews at, but when they're making my life unusually hard for no apparent reason, then it starts to become a little tiresome for me. Like, there were also talks of me taking some employability course. I asked about it and it was stated that it's a 3-week long course for those who are uneducated in using computers, finding/applying for jobs successfully and how to write an efficient CV, I just looked at her like, "Are you serious?" I'm a 25- year old male /w over 2 years of experience in my field, various experience in small time jobs, a professional looking CV, been using computers since I was 12, but you are having thoughts about sending me on a employability course? lol, pathetic.

Right okay, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't only me and was actually a traditional practice that they force into place.

Yeah that's true. Is everyone who is on the WP forced to come into their offices and do active job searches on their computers as well as job searches at home via: Universal Job Match?

This made me LOL irl, oh my days. Wouldn't sending this cause more problems? but then again I started to think to myself, if they're going to make my time there awkward and difficult, then why wouldn't I go ahead and do the exact same thing? Haha, this is amazing, they're so incompetent it's unreal. This gave me a good laugh though.

I was considering sending something over with the following: "Hi , I've decided against sending over my word copy in an attempt to avoid any changes (un-wanted changes more than anything) to my CV with or without my permission. You have my .PDF version of the CV and by my standard that is more than enough, most computers and definitely most browsers have built in .PDF readers, so it shouldn't be a problem for you or for anyone else with a modern-day computer to read the CV. Kind Regards, " Does this sound decent enough?

I might just do this to be honest. I have been asked to send over a copy of my CV in a word format today, I knew it was a bad idea putting my e-mail on top of my CV and handing it over to her, lol. My bad. But she does have it in PDF format and that's all I'm going to be giving her, I know full well that if I hand over my CV in Word Document, she'll try and make changes with or without my permission, so yeah, I don't think I'll be sending that over any time soon.

Fixed, thank you my friend!

Another thing that I noticed when I was there, was that she kept referring to me as "mate", she was an elderly woman, I'd say she was in her late 40's, maybe early 50's and the majority of the time that she would say something to me, for example: Me: "I actually love working, I like the social interaction, etc etc" Her: "Yeah mate, I know what you mean". It just felt really.. condescending to me, as if she's trying to appeal to me on a more friend type basis, the strange thing is, I was polite when I needed to be, I didn't call her any of the slang we used today, dude, man, mate, what have you, but yeah, that's another thing I just remembered. I got an e-mail at 4pm asking if I can come in for an interview for a new position that my advisor has put me for, I wouldn't have minded but it was literally tomorrow, I mean, contacting me last minute for an interview? I told her I can't do it tomorrow, as I've got my sign on date and I'm unavailable until Friday to which she obliged too. Furthermore, in the initial e-mail she stated that I would need to attend in formal clothing (suit/shirt/tie etc), to which I replied that I simply do not have any work clothes any more, as my previous ones are now too small. (dem gym gains tho), so I would need some kind of help/assistance there to help me out with some new clothing and she replied with the following: So first it was I've got to come down to the WP building and do a preliminary interview, but then as soon as I mentioned that I would need clothing, it was, "oh, well we'll see if you're successful in actually getting an interview first", lol. These people man, good grief.

I will bear this in mind, haha! Thank you so much, I'm going to use that late line for sure, I'm not wasting my time and getting there early/on time if others can simply not do the same.

Reporting back, I would just like to thank everyone thus far and I will give an in-depth analysis of what went on and as expected, it wasn't entirely good nor entirely bad. The interview was for 10:15, I got there and wasn't saw until 10:35, so that was off to a depressing start. She introduced herself as did I and then I immediately got into, "I've heard terrible things about this place, how they treat people, bla bla", I went on a 5-minute rant about all the things I had found out about online, via other members of this programme, via other people who are actual employers and so on. Her initial retort was: "Well there are people who want to work and there are people who do not want to work, which do you think are the people who are writing the WP sucks, are?", to which I responded: "Well to be honest, a lot of them are on the WP and are getting no where, some of them are personal friends, some of them are just employers, it varies, but the general consensus is that it's very bad, a lot worse than the actual Job Centre.", she didn't say anything after this and just moved on. After this, it was just general chit-chat and coincidentally she informed that her son was also a "Web Developer", so I asked about it, she couldn't give me any information what so ever, she didn't know what he did, how he did it or whatever, first it was "Oh my lad is attending University down in London" and then it was "Oh yeah, my lad is a web developer, he's been doing it for X years and loves it", clearly at an attempt to gain some familiarity with me. I then brought up that at one of my previous jobs, I worked for £175 per week and was often working from 10am - 8pm and the reason I left it was because I wanted a more stable job /w better hours and better pay and then she applied the old "Well, that's just life, I'm often in here from x hours to y hours", so I was sat there like, "Oh okay? great", didn't really have anything to say to that, it's not a competition love, calm down. One of the other issues that arose was that of the fact that I said, getting to Manchester will be exceptionally hard for me as it's 1hour to 1hour30 away and it's very costly, she then tried to tell me that it's only 30 minutes away and just for clarification, from where I am, I'm located in the NW, it takes me 20-25 minutes to get to Warrington, 30-40 minutes to get to Liverpool and 60 - 70 minutes to get to Manchester, but apparently she knows better, she has a direct line from her computer to the actual Train Lines, so I had to argue the fact that no, she was wrong and that's completely not the case, even if it were peak vs non peak, that's just wrong, she moved on after this. She had a look at my CV and was overall impressed, she said that I should add on some key skills etc, but I just said flat out, "No thanks, this CV is well up to my standards and the standards of others (that I've sent it too), I'm going to keep it like it is.", she said fine, I can't force you to make any changes but the options are there if needed, so we moved on from that. Throughout a lot of the conversation, she was pretty condescending, a lot of what she said is what I would expect her to say to someone with no qualifications/no goals, but I guess that it's just a rehearsed speech or whatever, so I just looked past it, I didn't let it bother me. One of the things that she informed me about was, around the corner to the WP building is a Market, she informed me that we gather there at least once per week (her and others who are on her WP) and we literally sign on, search for jobs there and help others who are currently in our situation, the way she explained was like the following. I attend and I meet the other people who also attend and say for example if there is a young girl there called Amy and she is looking for retail work, if I go away and see a retail job I will then come back the following week and tell Amy, "Hey Amy, I saw a retail job on X website, maybe you should check it out", this seems completely pointless to me, I don't have time to look for jobs for other people when I'm busy looking for one myself. My Advisor informed me that it's a good programme that has good results, but is currently full, but I'm number #2 in line to be next invited onto this programme/course thing and of course, it is mandatory. She also informed me that I would be (in the future) attending the WP building at least 3 times a week to job search, meet with my advisor and so on, I thought this was a bit excessive, on top of the fact that I've still got to search for jobs on my UJM account, but hey, whatever, I guess this is what has to be done, nothing I can really do about that. At least I'll be getting free busrides on days that I'd be going down anyway. So to summarise, when she input my information onto the computer and the types of jobs that she would help me get, it was Web Development, Admin Work, Tech support and Assistant Technician work, so that wasn't too bad. She also failed at trying to open up a link on Word (as you may know, if you ctrl and click a link in word, it'll open in your preferred browser), I told her this but then she said, "Oh yeah, well there's a problem with it at the moment, I wont bore you with the details", to which I thought was a little funny. One final thing she asked me towards the end was, "Is it as bad as you thought it was going to be?", to which I replied, "I'm not going to lie, but it seems as if what I've read online is true and I doubt I'll get any real help here, but we'll wait and see, wont we." I left shortly after, I was supposed to send my CV over in the form of a Word Document, but I've not had time, she has it in PDF form, so that's that. Sorry about the long post, but I thought I'd try and give back a little bit of information in case it can help anyone in the future. Thanks for reading . Oh and one important thing that I thought was completely and totally unprofessional was, a chat window on her computer had popped up, (some kind of internal chat feature or something) while she was talking to me and saving some of my information for their records, she opened the chat, read it and then proceeded to respond to it, while I was next to her and answering her questions, I thought this was very rude.

Hey man, thanks for the long winded reply, it's very much appreciated. I do all of these things already. I've got myself on linkedin, monster, reed, etc etc and well I do get phone calls a lot of the time from recruiters via: Linkedin, now the problem is that they call because they just see 'web developer' on my CV, but they don't really know much and they think all Web devs are the same, so some go somewhere and some don't. I had a phone call on Friday and was on the phone for over 30 minutes and then she told me that the position was in the far end of Manchester (Not going to work, considering I live 2 and a half hours away from that location and I do not drive). I'm actually going for my WP interview today, I'm just hoping that it's going to go well and now going to be a complete waste of my time (it probably is). To address one point you made earlier though: I do this all the time, in-fact the information you've provided there goes onto the front of my cover letters. Over the past 12 months, I've actually had work, but it's just freelance work and with me being freelance it's never stable enough for me to completely pursue it as a career. You're constantly competing with people on websites like e-lance and peopleperhour and when people have more contributions/work completed than you and often will undercut you? it's just a little hard.

I got sent a Harvard based CV template from a friend of mine who is currently attending, I based my CV off that and personally? I think it looks rather good, it's laid out in the correct manner and so on and I'm not being funny here but if I get told to change it, make adjustments and so on, it's just not going to happen, I've taken a fair amount of time on my CV and I'm not going to let somebody who may know less than me f* it up. Has anyone here turned down their offers to remove/add stuff to their CV's and if so, what happened?

Great more stuff to look forward too. Are the people that work in these places that hard to deal with? A lot of the posts that i've read seem to be that a lot of the people (as you've stated her) are just illiterate morons who don't really know anything and want to make your time as painful as possible. I really hope it doesn't turn out like this because I don't want to sound egotistical here, but I'm not really one to sit in a meeting with someone and not express my opinion really. Lol, like I was reading that a lot of people will get asked to sign a piece of paper, a contract or whatever, but they are usually only given 1/3 of the pages and refused the remaining pages unless they sign the page that they are given. I wont be standing for crap like that, it's just not how I am, lol. But thanks for your advice regardless. It sounds like so much fun ahead. /sarcasm

Thanks very much for the advice/help, it's all very helpful, I just wanted to know what I'd be in for over the course of however long I'm going to remain on the WP. Thanks very much.

Fixed, thank you.

Thanks bud, I'll get on that right away, see if I can find anything.

So essentially, I'm just going to provide a little bit of background information and then I'll get to the question at hand. I'm a University graduate with a 2:1 honors degree in Web Systems and Development (i.e. A Web Developer). I finished University in 2013, I worked up until July 2014 and have been out of work since that time, I have had freelance jobs here and there to help me along the way, but essentially, I have been out of full-time employment since July 2014. Without trying to toot my own horn here, I'm portraying this across to simply imply, I have a lot of qualifications and I have a fair amount of job experience, I have worked with over 5 individual clients, had jobs with 3 different people (from July 2013 - July 2014), so it's not as if I'm in short supply there either. So to get onto the actual topic. I've been on JSA since July 2014, but recently when I went to sign on, one of the advisors there informed me that because I had been on JSA for 12-months, I am now being transferred to "The Work Programme", she didn't tell me much about it, nor did the person who I had my interview regarding the appointment to set-up TWP interview. The sad thing that I happen to see reoccurring all the time is that, The Work Programme is a pile of crap, essentially. I have read no good stories about TWP, no advantageous results of being on TWP, it just seems like it is a gigantic waste of my time and it's going to be more hassle than it's worth. So I guess my question is this, typically what does TWP entail? Has there been any benefits of being on TWP and as someone with a heavy Computing background, will that help me with TWP. I've read that despite your qualifications, you are usually thrown into retail work (shops or whatever) just stacking shelves for 2-4 weeks, you then have a 2 week gap and then you're back on the next job, rinse and repeat until you eventually get a job out of it. I just don't really see how I or anyone else currently on this programme can take it seriously knowing that you're going to be in a place surrounded by other full time employees knowing that they are getting paid minimum wage while you're there working for close to £1.2 p/h? It just doesn't make sense to me. If anyone could fill me in, help me understand this a little bit more, that would be great.