While the Coalition Government is in full swing branding anyone receiving benefits as ‘work shy scroungers’ and blaming them, alone, for the massive hole in the country’s finances, it is worth recounting the advice a friend of mine was recently given.
She is in her mid thirties, is long term unemployed and has brought up 2 great kids (one of whom is about to start college), alone, and with no hope of additional help from a family. She desperately wants to find a job and has applied for many. She wants nothing more than to get off ‘the system’ but has no formal qualifications and, more importantly, little self confidence. With each rejection, her lack of self worth increases.
Her personal ‘work adviser’, at the local Job Centre, enrolled her on Launch Pad, a government funded scheme aimed at equipping those who have been long term unemployed, to regain the skills and confidence they need to secure that all important opportunity of work.
In a recent one-to-one interview with her course ‘mentor’ (a woman of middling years), she was given the following incredible piece of advice for attending formal job interviews:
‘Wear a short skirt and soften the tone of your voice’
True Genius!
Maybe the government should stop attacking those out of work and start looking seriously at the type of contractors they are paying huge sums of money to impart such sexist and stupid ‘skills’ advice!
