Is it still embarrassing to be unemployed?

Sheensie wrote: »

Thanks to you all for posting - it's really interesting to hear your views.

I'd really like to get some examples of people's personal experiences of unemployment... have you been unemployed for any length of time and are looking for a job with no luck? Or have you given up looking?

Maybe you've always worked and don't see how people are finding it difficult to get a job?

Either way, I'd be interested to hear your story.

Please PM me if you're interested in sharing your perspective for my article and I'll give you further info and contact details.

I've recently come out of 2 years of unemployment, having started up a small business... I tried applying for job after job after job but was either overqualified or sometimes I just couldn't work out what was going on that was causing a lack of interest at all in my CV/application.

I've come to the conclusion that it isn't what you know when applying for a job in this country or demonstratable skills, or academic record... It seems to me that a lot of jobs are filled these days on who you know or having a connection somewhere that will open a door for you.

This is the bit that I found most frustrating, dealing with a country full of people practically screaming at me through forums such as this website, that I should not be a burden on the state and go and look for work and that I'm a lazy useless c*nt, but at the time, despite all my very best endeavours, not seeming to be able to get out of the rut that I had found myself in.

One big thing that wrecked my head, was having to decide to take off the bit of text on my CV that said I was currently unemployed, albeit that you are then wandering into a territory where as an applicant for a job, you are trying to start an employment relationship on the basis of a mistruth, something that as an employer in the recent past, would have caused me to immediately park a CV and it's accompanying applicant, if I had become aware of some falsehood that the CV was carrying.

So anyway, after a year and a half of life on the dole and 2 years of unemployment, without money to get off this island, I found that the only way I could get myself off it was to create a position of employment for myself.

I still wonder what kind of an insufferable hell on earth it must be for someone who might not have had this particular option that was open to me, as I had worked for myself previously and had experience with starting up a business. I can't think of anything worse than being on the dole and not having some kind of a gameplan or strategy to get off it, I was fortunate that I was always working away on a project of my own that if I couldn't land a job, this was going to be my job that I had started up for myself, but I can honestly say if I hadn't have had that little tiny light at the end of the very long tunnel to wander towards over the last year and a half, I don't know what I'd have done...

As I said, it's not like I'd have had the money on the dole to go overseas and try a fresh canvas approach, I genuinely don't know what I'd have done, but I can say that although it was never something that I had ever contemplated, you certainly get a very clear insight into the deep and dark sense of abject hopelessness that I feel after my own experience, must be causing suicides in young males in Ireland.

One thing I deliberately left until last, is the experience of signing on every month. To me, the dole office is a huge part of the problem, and the staff that work down there, the culture within the front line staff in the local dole office is a huge part of the prolem... If I was minister for Social Protection in the morning, my fight against the scourge of unemployment would start in the local dole office.

There is this working assumption in the dole office, and you'd have to have gone through the "signing on" process to get a handle on this, that everyone at the business end of the counter is a worthless piece of absolute sh*t that is out to claim as much as they can and scam the system.

If I was Minister for Social Protection, I would start off by having three queues on signing on day...

Queue 1: Those who want to work and will take PAYE employment. I imagine this queue would be the longest by far. These people should be brought together into a group, their skillset and academic qualifications assessed within a week by them registering this information on a website, their work experience assessed and there should be an outsourced private sector HR/Recruitment Team that can work with these people IMMEDIATELY, (not in 12 weeks time as is the current set up with work to rules, etc), who want to work. The other thing that should be made mandatory is that all jobs/vacancies in the state should have to be registered with this new team, and if a suitable match is found, the employer should be incentivised to take the person in the queue on, with a small grant or something along those lines. (someone coming off 188 Euro a week saves the state 9,776 Euro a year. It seems like a no brainer to me, to give an employer a grant of 10% of that amount, 977 Euro in 3 or 6 months time, if the person is still in the job, saving the state 8,799 Euro a year and this is before you look at how much tax the person in the job might be paying after commencing work).

I say an outsourced private sector team because until you have to deal with the PS instransigent spastic belligerant gimps who work in the dole office, you will never understand why the place is so full of hopelessness, gloom and dread, and how their attitude towards those that they are paid to assist and serve, is projected onto the walls of the office that they work in. I have a theory that dole offices are literally infected with this deep sense of resentment by those that work there towards those that come through the door for state assistance.

Queue 2: Those who have worked for themselves before or who are in a position to start up businesses, who have a business plan and can get a business up and running with a 3K guaranteed LOAN maximum... This was the category that I fell into. As things currently stand, (2-3 years into this economic crisis), you would get more respect and thanks from any government department in this country, (or at least this has been my honest experience over the last 12 months), for keeping your mouth shut, your head down in the dole queue once a month and not rocking the boat, than you would get for walking into meet your Jobs Faciliator in your local dole office and saying that you want to start up a small business. There should be a proper enterprise support team along the lines of the BNI Network, where you turn up once a week, everyone supports each other, generating sales leads, looking at loan repayments, with local business people helping out on a voluntary basis. What is there at the moment is a Jobs faciliator in your local dole office, who takes your business plan for the "Back to Work Enterprise Scheme", and sticks it in a file. It never see's the light of day again!!! You fill out reams and reams of paperwork, but there is no purpose behind it, it is all for a big f*cking file they keep on you, but at no stage are you supported at all with your business!

Queue 3: For those that have no wish to do (1) or (2) above, I reckon there are only a handful of these people, and I think they should be set aside for the moment because if we dealt with the vast majority who present in a dole queue who fall into category (1) or (2) above, I don't actually think we'd have an employment problem at all in this country, or at least we would have a much much smaller problem than we currently have.

Make no mistake about it, and this is the word and opinion of a man here who has spent 1.5 years on the dole, tryed to find work, threw the towel in and ended up having to start up a small business: this government is currently obstructing job creation with petty rules, small minded petty politics in local dole offfices, rules that seem to be designed to keep people on welfare and civil servants in jobs, a lack of "giving a sh*t", by people who work in the dole office, a culture of, "that's someone else's job" in the dole office, and a lack of ownership of the problem of unemployment and a total absence of clear, fair and purpose driven LEADERSHIP by higher civil servants and the minister in question.

If you want to start dealing with a chronic unemployment problem, I don't know of a better place to start than with a "signing-on" queue of anywhere up to several hundred to possibly a thousand people once a month in a social welfare office.

dan_d wrote: »

That is an extremely good post HellfireClub.

The points about the dole officers are very true.I deal with 2 offices (such are the vagaries of the system), and in one, they are actually very good to deal with - but the other...oh the other...

Having quite recently been treated extremely rudely by these people, basically accused of lying and hung up on, I am left with a deep amount of resentment towards them. They are there to help people, some of whom are experiencing the most vulnerable period in their lives, and they treat people like dirt. It is inexcusable. Politeness costs nothing, and if somebody is being polite to you, the least you can do is be polite back. I don't care how jaded you are, or how much crap you have to deal with. Common good manners takes little effort and costs nothing.

The point about knowing someone is equally valid. It certainly opens more doors than cold applications, applying for your merit and experience.

And then there are the ignoramuses who shout that you're here by choice, creaming off the state and living a fine life because you "couldn't be bothered" working. It's unbelievable that there are still people out there that think 450k people are on the dole by choice.Unbelievable.

It's sad I think because with a bit of courage from those who are in management/in charge, and a bit of smart thinking, the national situation with unemployment could be very easily addressed. It's like as if they want people to stay on the dole or something or don't want people to start up small businesses. It truly is extraordinary and frightening I think, to observe how a state seems to be almost conspiring to keep it's citizens poor and dependant, rather than pushing them on to get into PAYE work or else start up small businesses.

My attitude to PS workers and this state has changed completely over the last 2 years and 12 months in particular. Once I have enough from the business to do so, I'm planning to expand into another country and base myself there, because what is going on here, there is no possibility whatsoever of success, you are wasting your time living in this country, it is a backwater gombeen kip that literally hasn't a f*cking hope I reckon, because those at the top are of a PS minded mentality where no risk is taken, everything is, "for the file", beaurocracy piled high upon beaurocracy, while all the time, nothing actually changes or gets done, while all the time, we are generating and shunting trailer loads of paperwork around to create the appearance of progress and to keep civil servants in jobs, maintaining their precious f*cking "system".

I'm lucky that my business model is internet based so I can sell here but be based somewhere else, once I get it past a certain stage in terms of sales. By next spring, I hope to be living in Cyprus, I'll come back here once every few months to laugh at the absolute f*cking state of the place...