How to sign on with your job coach/advisor

If you have read my previous 2 posts you will know how to do your initial signing on interview and how to do your job search. What about when you have to go to see your job coach/advisor?

You will be given a time when you have to go and sign on from your initial interview, you MUST attend this interview to be paid. If you do not attend you will not get your money. Also make sure you get to your interview on time or you can be sanctioned.

So you arrive at the job centre and will usually have to tell the receptionist that you are there to sign on. They will usually then ask for your booklet and ask you to wait in a seating area for your job coach/advisor to call you. When you are called your advisor will ask you to sit the other side of the desk from them.

Your advisor will ask you what steps you have taken to find work since you were last in there and this is where you get to show them your job search that i discussed in the last post. They will then make sure you have completed everything you agreed to do in your claimant commitment and if you followed my guide you will have completed it. 

They may ask you for access to your UJM account but you can just tell them that it is not mandatory to allow them access and it is your account. You can refer them to this document https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/166488/response/410483/attach/html/4/UJ%20Toolkit%20Chp%203%20v37.0%2011.07.13.pdf.html which is the UJM toolkit that advisors have to follow when using UJM and it tells them on there that access is not mandatory so you can tell them that their own guidelines tells them its not mandatory and is illegal for them to ask for access. If they persist on asking for access ask to speak to the office manager and let them know your advisor keeps asking for access. This usually stops them straight away from asking for access again as they know they shouldnt be doing it and if you are ready to show you wont just lay down and roll over they back off. So no matter what pressure they put you under, dont allow them access, they just want this to look for ways to sanction you easier.

Your advisor may also ask for other things you have done or are going to do to look for work. Here you can say you will be contacting more employers, visiting more employers, visiting/phoning/emailing more employment agencies, checking UJM and other online job sites, asking friends and family for jobs, checking facebook, twitter, linkedin and other media online to find work. 

Your advisor may be nice and helpful and genuinely be interested in helping you find work, they may be just interested in just getting you signed on and out of the office as fast as possible or they may be intent on being nasty to you and try to sanction you at any point. It just seems to be a lottery on who you get but just make sure you do everything on your Claimant Commitment form and there is little they can do to sanction you and if they attempt it and send it to a decision maker to see if you can be sanctioned, appeal it, if you have been doing everything on your claimant commitment form your appeal should be upheld and you will not be sanctioned. 

The biggest advice i can give you is do everything you can to do everything you can on your claimant commitment form and dont give the dwp access to your ujm account and you will be more safe from sanctions than if you give them access and dont keep up with your claimant commitment agreements.