Not Enough Supply, Too Much Demand

 

The news that the government is planning the biggest shake up in the UK’s welfare system in 60 years has caused discussion all over the country. Few people would disagree that a culture of reliance on the welfare state is a good thing, but the idea that the long-term jobless may be forced to do manual labour in order to receive their benefits has got hackles raised all over the country.

The government points to somewhere in the region of 450,000 jobs that it claims are out there to be had if people would just be willing to work for them, a large majority of those being manual jobs in London. The veracity of this claim remains to be seen, but even were it true it would still mean close to 2 million people who would be out of work without any jobs being available.

 

Even if official figures seem to suggest that the employment outlook is improving (and it will certainly be over the Christmas period as seasonal workers are taken on in their tens of thousands) the facts behind the figures are concerning. Hundreds of thousands of people have chosen to take part-time work or reduced wages instead of becoming unemployed, and these people don’t appear in the figures. Nor do the masses of people who have declared themselves out of work and not looking.

 

There is lots of different advice out there giving ideas for how people can get back into employment, but ultimately, when the demand for jobs so far outstrips the supply, the competition is going to be steep.

 

Volunteering and getting extra qualifications is a great idea, but can be expensive and time consuming. Likewise improving your CV or practicing your interview technique are important, but there is so much conflicting advice that really the best advice in an interview is to be yourself and try to appear confident and capable, whilst for a CV make sure you show it to a lot of different people and take on their thoughts.

 

The best way of guaranteeing a quick route back into work is to look widely and to look thoroughly, keep an eye on recruitment company’s websites like reed.co.uk, newspapers, and on specialist job-finding websites. Apply for everything that you think suits you, and put all your effort into each application. Even if you don’t have success, and it’s disheartening to get a rejection letter after putting a lot of effort into an application, there are so many people trying, that to really stand out above the crowd you have to put your best effort in.

 

Aside from that, the major other quality you need is luck.

 

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