Recent Blog Posts

Job centres all around the country will be feeling the strain both now during the festive period and pushing well into the New Year.  As a result of all the redundancies in the UK to date, the ever-increasing number of unemployed people is rising dramatically...thus having a knock on effect to job centres UK wide....

However, should a government run organisation be putting barriers up to stop people getting back into work?

The job centre was asked if they could provide help in relation to the unemployed obtaining Criminal Records checks...this was declined and it was advised that candidates would need to pay for this directly. The enhanced CRB costs on average £42.00 and as we can appreciate most job-seeking candidates do not have this kind of money during this current financial time. The CRB also takes on average 8 weeks to come back and some companies will not accept a pending request....

Surely the job centre and the government should be doing everything they can to get people back into work and if this means paying for CRB's and claiming back via the fortnightly allowance a small amount then this is what needs to be done?

Should the government be helping more during this crisis........?

Redundancy...

Over the last few weeks it has become clear that a vast majority of our jobs are not looking like they will be in existence going into the New Year. This has resulted in many people being out of work and looking for jobs.

I was made redundant from one of the UK's major insurers a few years ago, and they offered us all the chance to register with an agency. The agency came into our offices and helped us through the paperwork and explained the current situation regarding employment. They also spoke about various study courses which they would assist us getting on if we wanted to change career...
I found this service invaluable; they helped me with my CV, kept me up to date with the recruitment situation and aided me in finding work.

How many people are now in this situation and would benefit from such a service provided by an agency?, should the government be pushing this?

It is becoming ever more of a requirement now to have the relevant police criminal record checks done prior to working. This is mainly because of the wrong people working in the wrong places! The CRB check can either be done by you via http://www.crb.gov.uk/ or via an agency. The only problem is that if you apply for your CRB yourself can only use the CRB for the stated company your wanting to work for and it is not transferable.... so therefore each time you apply for a job that requires a CRB and the company is not the same you will have to pay again...HOWEVER if you apply for your CRB via an agency such as Gemini Resourcing it is transferable to any of their clients and can be used for more than one company...Money Saver or what??? What are your thoughts on the CRB checks not being transferable if you do it yourself?

Are your staff entitled to live and work in the UK
If you employ staff from outside the UK, or may do in the future, you will need to check whether they have the right to live and work here.

You might find this process easier after 25th November 2008, the government is starting to replace paper-based immigration documents, stickers and stamps with compulsory biometric identity cards.


Within three years all foreign nationals - from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland - applying to come to the UK for more than six months or those who wish to extend their stay will also need to apply for an identity card.

I found the following link both interesting and useful:


http://www.embusinesssupport.co.uk/lz//lz.aspx?p1=05785461S397&w=3769&cID=0&cValue=1

Curriculum Vitae, whats that? Do you mean CV? Where do I start?

Is there such a thing as a bad reference, Ive never seen one, pretty obvious really, who in their right mind is going to produce a prospective employer with a bad reference?