Signing on, not giving up!

Having been out of work for 2 months, I decided I should find out what benefits I was entitled to. It wasn't something I'd ever thought I'd have to do, but not having received much of a redundancy payout and having got married earlier in the year I was basically skint.

I decided to sign on for a few different reasons

1. I saw on my P45 that I'd paid nearly £10k tax last year. So I did feel like I was owed something
2. Every politician appearing on the news listed how much was being done for the newly redundant, but I hadn't seen a scrap of evidence
3. My wife said I had too!

So I checked on direct.gov.uk and saw I was entitled to £60.50 a week, which isn't great but could slow down the rate I was ploughing through my meagre savings. I called up the HMRC and registered as unemployed. If you have to do the same do brace yourself for a very frustrating process. It did all seem very convenient at the being able to register online or on the phone, but 90mins later having clarified repeatedly that I did not have a war pension, a live in carer or a life threatening illness it did seem a bit of a waste of time. (To be honest I felt so lucky I wasn't even sure that I deserved anything!) I knew that as part of a couple, being generally healthy and having no children all I would be entitled was the basic job seekers allowance (contributions based) but there is no way to sidestep the process and just claim the minimum.

I naively assumed that the 90min inquisition meant I was on the system, but sadly not. The next step was an interview the following day. Standing outside the job centre the next morning it was a stark change to my outlook, 3 months previously I'd been presenting new products to our CEO in a cutting edge technology company, yet now I was about to go on the dole. It didn't get much better as I waited for my appointment and a lady with a clipboard came round and asked if I wanted to work in the new Tesco distribution centre. I tried to swallow my pride but there was a bit of me wondering if that really was what the future held.

It is hard to take a positive from this scenario but maybe it is a good thing that some of our generation will see the inside of the benefits system and see the value that we should attribute on a steady job, both as employees and employers. In the past I've certainly seem them as a commodity and didn't imagine I would ever struggle to get a job, but now they are in shorter supply maybe it is a time to reappraise that.

When I finally got called for my interview the career advisor was sympathetic and explained that she was seeing a lot of professionals and skilled workers having been made redundant. She did look at me blankly when I described my experience in online advertising and online product management, but I got off lightly compared to the guy in the cubicle next to me who was trying to explain what transferable skills a thermo-biologist has!

I was told that I could manage my own job search for the first 3 months, with the only requirement being that I attend every fortnight to detail what I'd undertaken as part of my job search. I don't think there is much of a chance that the job centre is ever going to be the way I find my next job but realistically it is never going to be able to cover the breadth of roles that are under threat in the current economic climate.

So my advice is not to be too hard on yourself about signing on. It's your right to receive the cash and even though it is unlikely to cover your weekly expenses it can help whatever you do have last longer. Ideally it can help with interview expenses and the odd treat to keep your spirits up. I'm looking forward to a mid-day beer or two when I get my money, unfortunately 4 weeks after first visiting there's no sign of it, as apparently the system is creaking under the current strain of the newly unemployed.

Overall: brace yourself for a bureaucratic process but don't beat yourself up about claiming benefits. Hopefully it won't be for too long

Good luck

Rob