AIBU to want a different Universal Credit work coach?

Re Stacey Duguid and all her media outreach, in case she's reading ...
I do think that she has been really brave and created some much stronger visibility on this issue of mid-career worklessness. But I think the problem is structural in the economy ...

Stick with it OP. Summer is a terrible time for recruitment. Things might get better soon.

Your job coach is not the issue. As PPs have said, the title is a misnomer. They are essentially an administrator who processes your benefit claim. You are undoubtedly better qualified than them and could do the job better than them. I don't think there's much point asking for a new one. The new one might be marginally more competent at filling in the paperwork quickly but they won't be able to offer you any of what you actually need to find a new job, which is actionable intelligence on local/national opportunities or labour market trends.

The job market for well-paid knowledge workers in mid-career (which is what you sound like you are and I am too) has currently ground to a halt. If you are a woman it - anecdotally - seems to be worse. See, for example, all the recent media interviews by an unemployed fashion editor called Stacey Duguid.

I don't agree with Duguid that AI recruitment processes are the problem (although they are a problem). I think these are a symptom not a cause.

IMO, the multiple causes of the frozen labour market:
Brexit - took a huge bite out of the UK economy and we exported 000s UK jobs to Europe.
Other geopolitical factors leading to rising business costs eg Ukraine war, Straits of Hormuz - less £££s for companies to spend on wages
UK business tax rises by Rachel Reeves eg NI didn't help (although are a local difficulty compared to the two factors above)
The rising business costs are leading some companies to export jobs, like what's happening in your ex-workplace
Then AI. Is it taking knowledge worker jobs? Well, some, already, for sure. If any freelance translators or audio transcribers are reading, to name two former jobs, their work has been decimated. But there is probably also a factor that businesses are currently spending their spare cash on AI-related software, or tokens, or improved cybersecurity and so on ... and not on back office services that they can automate or outsource.

All this leads us to ... it being very very hard to find a job at the moment.
It's also hard for grads, NEETs and other groups, of course but in this post I just want to focus on mid-career knowledge workers who can't get a job.

MN isn't on average very helpful as a source of real intel on what to do next. It's easy to say: "well get a job in a supermarket, or as a care worker, or as a cleaner" or as you heard above "become a freelance accountant" but these are often a sort of substitute moral position statement (eg "work, get a job any job, don't claim benefits") rather than sensible advice that takes into account an individual person's skills or future aims.

These are the most helpful things I can say:
*To get a future job in your industry you will have to have a look at future trends to form your own judgment about whether it's still got any life in it or is dying. It is quite hard to take a step back at a stressful time but it is a thought-provoking exercise. You can mine the FT for this, for example and listen to some industry podcasts. Is there any place in finance that jobs are expanding right now? In fintech? Or could you move over into wealth management for HNWs? Or pensions. And so on. (I don't know much about the finance industry so these are just sub-sectors I'm plucking out of the air - I'm sure you can think of better).
*widen your search to national or even international, not just local (I appreciate this might be hard if you have young kids etc).

*recruitment consultants are pretty useless atm. Not because some of them aren't nice well-intentioned people but because we are in a falling labour market and they don't have many vacancies to recruit for. Don't waste too much time with them.
*don't invest money or time in "retraining" unless you are really certain it will lead to opportunities. I know several people who took a law degree as adults about 5-6 years ago in the hope of becoming a paralegal, getting articles etc. It mostly hasn't worked out, because of outsourcing and AI although they could not have predicted this when they excitedly signed up for their courses. Ditto becoming an electrician or tradesperson. You can pay to attend a training course but then you have to find an apprenticeship which is a big blocker, not because of AI but because of the structure of the industry.
On finding any work at all.

*don't bother with supermarkets etc. They are all staffed up by existing workers or the young grads who can't get the other jobs. If your job coach suggests you apply for Tesco put in an application and then you can say you have. If you get the job great. But you almost certainly won't.
*think what practical skills some people don't have for work and see if there is anything you can trade on. Driving is a good one. A requirement to drive and access to a car as part of a wider job eg salesperson will knock quite a lot of potential applicants out of the frame. But there are other non-core but necessary skills that might differentiate you
*look for where the zero hours contracts that you can do might be. In the finance industry are there tasks that are outsourced to agencies that you could do, even if min. wage. Most of these types of agencies are now assigning tasks by apps.

I could say plenty more but this post is already too long!
The main thing is you are not on your own. There are plenty of us in the same boat even if on MN the discussion is a bit fragmented and keeps getting mixed up with NEETs and grads etc.

Seen enough threads like this to think the smart move if you find yourself unemployed is to get a job as a DWP work coach

Many years ago I applied for a job at the Job Centre-the system was appalling, all sorts of errors. Yes, that was years ago, but as with the NHS, schools and councils, there are some amazing workers, but it seems some awful ones are tolerated.
You could ask. If everyone complained about incompetence, things might improve. This is the first time in history that a lot of very capable, intelligent, willing and experienced workers are having to use the Job Centre-it used to be that a greater proportion of their clients didn't want to work Not holding my breath though.

I had to claim UC for a few months after a contract ended and I hadn't found a new job - my work coach wasn't quite that bad but also fairly clueless (I've got a Masters and not had any previous breaks in employment since I was a teenager - not what they're used to dealing with). The worst bit was having to go to 'jobs fairs' which were just a few people sitting behind desks with posters, mainly for construction job schemes - I also don't drive so wasn't suddenly becoming a digger driver... I did get asked to apply for a job they had going in the job centre 😬🤣

It was a depressing few months. Just turn up to the appointments, keep applying for jobs and keeping your records of what you're applying for, to make sure you're ticking all the boxes.

They were so excited when I did finally get a job - my work coach was desperate to give me money from a fund they have for new work clothes - which I did take up, but turned out to be the slightly humiliating experience of having to send the exact links to the cheapest items at Matalan and tell them what size I was (I wrote a small essay about how I couldn't buy the very cheapest trousers because I'm short and needed petite length so could I please have an extra few pounds 🥹).

Exactly what I was thinking. I've had to apply a couple of times and my work coach was never the person who does the id check

Have you looked at agencies like Indeed etc for work? I skim read your responses so might have missed that?

It is part of the enshittification of society. We are all supposed to be pathetically grateful for scraps, know our place (bottom of pile) and stay in our lane.

The whole benefit system is actually very anti any kind of training or the concept of betterment - when obviously for society as a whole it would be good if they could support progress.

There is no concept of social mobility left anymore.

UC work coaches aren’t there to navigate the work market for you, or even to help you find work you want
They are there to ensure you are fulfilling your work commitments, so her offering you things like SEN TA is just her doing her job. You don’t need qualifications to do that. She really isn’t going to narrow down searches to your line for work or preference- she’s basically there to push you into (any) employment..

Reframe her role in your mind. Think of it as a couple of hours of your time each week, in exchange for the money. That way it feels worthwhile. Think of her not as an actual coach, which she isn't, but a gov employee checking that people in receipt of UC are actively looking for work. That's all she is.

Good luck with the job search. You sound very focused.

I don't think as others have said that changing your Work Coach will mean that you receive any useful support with finding another job. Most Work Coaches have very large caseloads and even if they wanted to wouldn't be able to offer much support. You sound very able and it is unlikely that a Work Coach is going to add much value to your job search. I haven't had recent contact with the National Careers Service but when I worked in the Job Centre as part of my role with an advice agency they helped a couple of my clients.

It clearly is possible to change work coach as a previous poster upthread managed to do it. I have also had client's ( I'm a benefits advisor ) who have been able to do it.

No, you can't demand/ask/request somebody else. You get who you've been given.

For the purposes of receiving UC, you are no different from anybody else who attends, you are no more special than anybody else and you do not require somebody who can 'comprehend' what you're saying - because it is entirely irrelevant. You need a job and you need to keep looking and applying for jobs in order to fulfil the job seeking requirement of the benefit - a SEN TA is something reasonable for them to suggest (in their eyes, and as they make the decisions, that's all that matters) when you take into account that you are literate, numerate and breathing.

Have you signed up with a general employment agency for temp (semi-perm / perm) work? Factory work etc - it's easier to get some / any work quickly & you never know where this or the networking will lead you.

I really hope things improve for you soon, it must be a massive worry especially when you have young kids. I was made redundant in April , I am 58. I have managed to find another job quickly, but yes the job market is dire. As mentioned above my newly graduated DS is on UC and all he has been able to find is a 16 hour a week retail job which he is grateful for but it's no ideal in terms of wanting to get on with his life, move out of home etc. When I was job searching I also considered a work coach role.

If you've got skills & are proactively looking & applying then the work coach can't really offer you anything & they all follow the same process so another individual won't offer you anything different

It depends whether or not you want to receive UC while you are searching as UC will be sanctioned if you don't attend.

If you think it's something you might be good at yourself it's worth asking her how she got the role. Being in a difficult situation yourself would make you more aware of the difficulties people face.

Your “work coach” is basically there to make sure you are looking for work and sanction you if it appears you’re not. They might give you some profound advice such as “use Indeed.com” or “have you tried Tesco?” but that’s about it.

I'm an accountant who lost a job last year sacked :( but, like the OP, not from a practice background.

I would love to move to doing "the books" for small businesses, but, these days the costs of compliance insurance and software would be at least £3k per year.

I'm now back in manufacturing. Lower level, but zero stress.

I can understand your concern. I had a work coach who never replied to my messages and claimed to have called me (we had a telephone appointment) but I had no missed calls. I messsged her 10 minutes after the appointment to ask if the appointment was going ahead - and got not reply. I messaged later the same day letting her know of my availability over the next week - again nothing. I filed a formal complaint and asked for a new work coach and got one. Incidentally if you do need to complain, the DWP does have an official form for this but it is hard to find. I had to get chatGPT to find it. The complaint was actually dealt with very quickly and reasonably.

In the meantime, you could ask her manager to call you and then ask informally to swap to a different coach. But yes as others have said, work coach is probably a misnomer. I had to complain to the Job Centre about something else and the manager did phone although I didn’t get much joy even though I think they were actually breaking the law.

The Job Centre is pretty useless IMHO. When I booked in, I asked them if there was an extra benefit for disabled people - they said no. There is one and I receive it. I should have complained about that too. Luckily, I found out about it a week or two later.

When my ds signed up in June I said to him that he would have weekly appointments and they would really hassle him but they've barely given him any appointments and certainly no hassling ! Maybe just overwhelmed with numbers?