Throughout the preparation for the Employment Tribunal, I had to continue looking for work and maintain a record of my job seeking for the Job Centre as does everybody who receives JSA.
Having moved from Blackpool to a remote part of Perthshire, employment prospects are thinly spread compared to urban areas. The Job Centre always demand that the three fields on a job seekers file (which state the kind of work they are looking for) are completed - but it is not permitted to say 'any'.
So, here is the first paradox of job seeking; My skills are quite specific, i.e. graphic design and filmmaking and I have experience in another field, care management but have no qualifications. The opportunities in graphic design are few and far between. If I put 'graphic design' in one of these fields, I am told that there are no jobs in graphic design around here. If I put 'care management', I am told that I won't get that kind of work because I am not qualified. And I am not allowed to put 'any'. But when I look for jobs I am not limiting my search in any way, I am willing to consider most things and have applied fro a more diverse range of jobs than I ever thought possible. So, why am I forced to limit the kind of work I am looking for in the fields I have to complete. It just results in an idiotic Kafkaesque dilemma which the poor civil servant behind the desk cannot comprehend and I end up having to pick three random dead end careers out of thin air in order to escape from the meeting.
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