Desperately Seeking… Our New Blog from the World of Work

Meet our heroine – talented, lively, hard working, striving and ambitious. A Londoner. With a deal of bad luck in her life but also acts of kindness and support, for instance a lot of random but interesting internships. A desire to do well and to change the world for the better. She’ll tell us how that all that is working out for her, over the next four weeks.

I am 23. I have strived for education and aspiration against odds of homelessness, job instability and mental health issues derived from trauma. I work hard. I know I’m clever. I have a lot of work experiences in media and creative industries; I’ve done masses of voluntary work in homelessness networks.

I can never quite seem to sustain the leap from poverty and instability.

After my summer work-experience ended I couldn’t find a job.I signed on with the brand new ‘Universal Credit’. I don’t have a formal tenancy because who can afford to live in London in a non-derelict house these days? This means I am not entitled to housing benefit and so receive £208 job seekers allowance in arrears- the first payment coming in after 44 days, and later every month if I meet the Job Centre’s relentless demands

Training

I have experience in lots of different areas which could combine quite effectively: media, art and tech. In these areas I have represented a start up nationally, completed work experience for a highly acclaimed artist, and, advocated passionately for young people and published articles in national newspapers. I thought when I arrived at the Job-Centre that my work coach would help me find a job suitable to my knowledge- instead she slid across a print out for a minimum wage job cleaning train platforms. Ok, I took that one on. This is the process. If I passed the application stage I would be interviewed and tested. If I passed that I would be sent on a weeks training before another interview; if I passed that I would be given work experience at a train company, if I passed that I would get a job. (This process is all unpaid, of course).

I returned home plagued by thoughts of being sanctioned (denied money for insubordination i.e. being late etc.), and feeling vaguely ashamed of my jumped up ideas of getting a job where I might be ‘someone’. A feeling common to anyone seeking state help –seeking help is criminal and you’re obviously lying fluently in order to live in the high luxury of £52 a week. Its everywhere – in the plastic cover on the side of the desk you might lay or hands on and the security who jump you for bringing in anything as ordinary as a bottle of water..

I told my work coach I didn’t want the train job. I was still thinking I could get a job that would use my talents and engage my interest(a bit).Luckily after a few meetings my work coach and I decided we liked each other; she could see I was working hard at getting a job and I could see that she cared deeply about people but as she put it her ‘hands are cut off and tied behind her back’ by the system.

She suggested I apply for a job in admin, a compromise. ‘I have done some admin within projects but I’d need someone to take a chance on me to a degree ‘I said – she murmured something.  I applied for any and every admin job I could find – my cover letters were being checked over and I felt confident. The next time I saw my work coach I told her, bemused, that no one had invited me for an interview. I’m sorry to say, she said, but these days no one will train anyone- it costs them money- it’s not like it was.

And so this has become a theme, I apply for a job that I know I could do, that in some form I have done already, but no one will take a chance on me because no one wants the effort of training someone when they could simply find someone trained.

44 days in I have £208 in arrears. I’m living in a friend’s house for 2 months. Next week I’ll describe what relationships are like in this work seeking world.