A4e – Second Interview, Online Assessments, and seemingly hitting a brickwall.

The first of 4 planned posts, before my next appointment with A4e – this one talks about my second interview, the A4e Online Assessment tool, and the feeling of seemingly hitting a brickwall. Originally I’d hoped to have all 4 posts / articles online by today, however I twisted my ankle over the weekend (It’s my own fault for going running while it was raining), so I’m taking things a bit easy, until it’s fully back to normal. Anyway, that’s enough of my offline difficulties – onto the topic at hand.

Tuesday saw me up nice and early, so that I could fit in my morning run, before heading out for my appointment with A4e. Following on from my first interview with my “Career Coach” I’d been set two seemingly simple tasks – bring in a copy of my CV, and complete an initial assessment, through the A4e Website. Sounds simple enough…

Bringing in my CV wouldn’t be a problem, as I’ve got a few hardcopies stored away, for sending off for jobs, as well as a version stored on my computer, so I simply put one in an envelope, ready for my appointment. The initial assessment, is a 107 question “Assessment”, that has to be completed via the MyA4e website.  I logged onto the A4e website, clicked on the link to take the assessment, and ran into the first problem:

[Basically I was on a linux machine, and the assessment requires Internet Explorer v5 or above, to work]

So, after logging out of Linux, and booting into Windows, I tried again, only this time I ran into a different problem:

After contacting A4e, it turns out, you need to go into the Security settings within Internet Explorer, and allow Popups – The machines within the A4e branches have already had this done to them, but it looks like something you need to change yourself on your own machine (then remember to change it back – popups are, after all, blocked for a reason).

So – the initial assessment itself. It comprises 107 questions, that appear to have been written in such a way as to ensure that, unless you lie through your teeth, you’re going to get “low scores” at the end of it -There are 107 Statements, that you’re asked your opinion on – ranging from Strongly Disagree through to Strongly Agree. Rather than attempt to manipulate the results, I answered honestly – which I think explains some of my scores (more on that hunch later on). Here, according to the online A4e assessment, are my results:

Now, from my point of view, this initial assessment has produced some “interesting” results – I’ll address them in order:

• Motivation: I run 8 – 10 miles EVERY DAY. Regardless of the weather. Now, I’m no expert, but I think that requires quite a bit of motivation, especially in November 🙂 Perhaps, however, they mean motivation to look for work? – If that’s the case, I can only say that I’ve apply for at least 3 jobs every week – that’s 120+ jobs so far this year. I attend the Jobcentre regulary, access the Jobcentre Plus website regularly, and have been told, on multiple occasions, both by Jobcentre Plus staff, and staff from external organisations – including A4e, that I’m extremly motivated to get back into work.
• Life: I like to think I lead a healthy lifestyle. As well as running 8-10 miles every day, I make a point to eat very, very healthily. Whilst I’m clearly not the sharpest pin in the box, so to speak, I think I’m reasonably intelligent, I try and occupy my time with meaningful activities, such as reading and watching films (I’d be interested to know how many members of staff at A4e have watched Les Quatre Cents Coups recently). I live on my own, keep my apartment nice and clean, and despite being in receipt of Housing Benefit and JSA, and having to pay my bills, such as rent, water rates, gas, electricity, tv licence, etc, I still save £100 per month. I’d also like to think that, whilst I’m not the snappiest dresser, I “present myself” in a fairly respectable way.
• Skills: I’m not going to disagree with this one 🙂 Actually – joking aside, whilst I do have some respectable qualifications, they’re only really useful in one specific area of I.T. – If I wanted to get into a different field fo employment, then my skills are actually quite low.
• Job: Seeing as I don’t have a job, this one is quite high. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what this is supposed to represent (for what it’s worth, neither does my FND Advisor, which is somewhat worrying).
• Experience: Another “interesting” result. I’m 25 years old, and so far I’ve worked for 6 years, which I don’t think is all that bad, given the number of years I’ve been unemployed, and on Probation. What’s more – A4e are looking to push me into I.T. work – all my experience has been in I.T. – and some of it has been quite complex (a lot, of Unix command line based work, sql database management, PHP Programming, etc, etc).

So those are the results of my “initial” assessment. Having completed it, and armed with quite a few questions, I trundled along to my interview, to see how things were progressing:

In short – because ultimately everyones interviews are going to be different, as everyone will have different backgrounds, etc, etc – I asked about what I perceived as my inappropriately low assessment results, and was simply told “It’s nothing really – If you did it again, you’d get different results”  – I suppose I would – next time I’m asked “Do you think we can help you“, and I answer “Strongly Agree“, as opposed to “Neither Agree or Disagree” as I did the first time around (how, exactly, are people supposed to answer these kind of questions, after a single 60 min chat?).

Other than that – we discussed the inevitable difficulties my “background” (as it’s now seemingly being referred to) would cause, with finding my any kind of job, yet alone a meaningful career, and it was suggested to me, that, whilst I’m still on Police / Probation contact, it might be better to just “keep things ticking over” until it all finishes, early next year – In other words, Congratulations, You’ve seemingly hit another brickwall, in terms of meaningful progress. So I left my second interview feeling not all that spectacular to be honest – oh, and with an appointment for my “A4e induction”, which would take place later that week (and which I’ll blog about next).

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