Unemployment support update: the end of the course, the plan, the interview... the waiting

[cimorene]

My last update on the subject of unemployment support and my future career was from the career-planning course and mentioned my indecision about continuing to pursue classroom assistantship because the job market is particularly bleak for it. But the career advisor later advised me to pursue finishing the cert. (i.e. finding a new program) nonetheless, because, in short, nothing to lose really. She acknowledged that the job market there is actually worse than the job market in sales, but said that the job market in sales isn't good enough to let that count much in its favor because it sucks for nearly everything right now, but that having a finished certification, even one in a field that won't employ, is better than not having one, both from the job bureau's point of view and from the point of view of jobseeking. I could probably finish in under a year, while receiving the same unemployment benefits I'm getting now, and the odds of finding a job in that time aren't particularly good anyway, was her assessment.

So she called the guy in charge of the classroom assistant certification at her school and summarized my situation and got his recommendation, which was: find a temporary work practice in the field and use their reference to apply to the course, then request a one-on-one meeting to discuss which bits I might be able to get out of.

The job-hunting watchword right now is apparently what is different about you from all the other applicants, and so we decided my main one is the fact that my native language is English, so she recommended a daycare with English as easier to talk into work practice (because there are private daycares which are not affected by the municipal hiring freezes) on the basis of my native language, and gave a starred review to one she had past experience of. So accordingly I polished my CV and requested a work practice placement at this daycare, and that was right before Christmas. After Christmas the boss there emailed me back and scheduled an interview which I went to last week, and she liked me and all.

So, said Boss, we've got two groups we could potentially put you in... but make sure you are pre-approved from the employment bureau to do a work practice and then we'll do the paperwork and discuss which one to put you in! We both agreed that the bureau would PROBABLY approve the placement, but both Boss and I have previously thought we were going to be approved for a work practice only to have the employment bureau reject it for utterly confusing reasons. I agreed that she was right.

And so began the Quest to Find Out from the Employment Bureau if I Can Haz This Work Practice. Wednesday I mostly spent on the edge of an attack of acute anxiety because social anxiety, calling people on the phone, etc. But Thursday I carefully wrote out all the points I thought I needed and called the number given to me by my caseworker when we spoke in October.

It rang about 500 times. She didn't pick up.

Since this was office hours, and there was no message, I decided to try other employees of the job bureau, and I spent basically the rest of the day combing their FAQs and called two more numbers, and waited on hold twice, to go through ALMOST the same conversation with the national and local job office phone question answerers. Both of the phone question answerers told me Probably, which was exactly what I already thought.

I submitted a request for my caseworker to call me and Friday I got a receipt that the message had been received by the message-handler, but still nothing from my caseworker. I know that as waxjism points out what I SHOULD do is call and just keep calling, like every thirty minutes or something, and that's what I should have done on Friday as well, but I haven't worked up to it yet, and at least my request is in the pipeline, so if she is available to answer the phone she will surely also be handling her emails? Right? Eventually?

Comments

[vass]

Ugh, so much sympathy. Waiting for bureaucracies to call back and give the go-ahead for something is the worst.

[princessofgeeks]

Good luck!

[laurajv]

All the headdesks! "Let's try and get you employable! Except let's fuck off instead la la la!"

oh, bureaucracy.

[msilverstar]

IJWTS I think you are in a far better position in childcare than in sales, because sales is for extroverts. I work with a sales guy and he's pretty smart and technical, but smears compliments like butter and lies like a rug.

[cimorene]

I was specifically looking at retail cashier stuff, not that type of sales. I've done it before and I like it.