Answer: around half the time
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/05/...bmatch-website-fraud

Folks on the dole once said there were no jobs. Now there are not-jobs.

Meanwhile
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/28/...woman-coma-find-work

Just cartoonishly evil

lol yup.
Theres a whole pile of these so called 'delivery agent' 'jobs' that are actually just door to door sales like Avon and they even ask you to pay for the goods up front to sell and then only give you a tiny % commission and don't even cover fuel costs.
Waste of fu**ing space.

They shouldn't be allowed to list on the system IMHO.

I have had this problem many times with recruitment agencies. They advertise a job, you send in your CV you don't hear back so you phone them to ask about your interview only to find out there was no ACTUAL job (or it had gone months ago) they just wanted you on their register. Arrggghhhhhh

Babs wrote:
I worked at an agency a few years back. I lasted 3 days and the reason I left was the amount of fake jobs they advertised just to snare possible candidates.
Bar stewards.

I have to admit, that's a pretty good scam. Morally reprehensible, obviously.

I've applied for jobs only to find there was no actual job meself. It didn't affect benefits cos i never claimed them but it was a minotr pita all the same. Must be well annoying if you are under the benefit regime.
So who pushes this? The gov/dwp or the businesses with the dodgy adverts?

dubmeup wrote: You ask that like they are separate entities mate.

There's a job for everyone.

twitter.com/chunkymark/status/299401525548171264

The Gubbermunt are making sure of it

Babs wrote:
As far as i am concerned recruitment agencies are absolute con artists.

The amount of people they don't bother paying after the work has been carried out is very high.

The reason employers use agencies is to avoid any legal obligations to the employee.

Edit.
I always wanted dick dastardly to win just one race at least.

The DWP site is no different to any other job search site which in my experience all are full of mythical jobs. I was signing on last year for a time and sent off a lot of CV's and never heard anything back - in the end I started ringing the agencies up when I saw a job advertised just to see if they existed. Generally vagueness abounded, a lot seemed to be an "interview stage" even for ones that had been posted that day.

The job centre I found were pretty clueless about how Universal Job match worked but were aware of the problem of non existent jobs on the site - I rarely used it was that bad and knew I couldn't be forced to use it at the time, not sure I'll get away with that next time I'll be claiming.

I wouldn't though say all agencies are bad - I worked for a couple down in Wales who I couldn't fault - paid on time, got me pay raises when I asked, treated me as a person not a number on their books. The last few years though has been totally different story - noticed the rise in the number who want you signed up to umbrella companies and on their travel to work schemes, if you ask questions they don't like it and pencil you into the "trouble" category - not good and seems to getting worse.

I've managed to hold down a steady imaginary job that doesn't exist for just over twenty years.

Can't wait for my imaginary pension entitlement!