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Follow your dream ... with the National Careers Service’s online quiz

shawn mach
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A government jobs quiz aimed at identifying potential new areas of work provides a string of unhelpful career suggestions including lock-keeping and boxing as well as currently precarious posts including airline pilot and cinema projectionist, users have complained.

Rishi Sunak’s warning that the coronavirus pandemic will force employees to adapt to find work has prompted much interest in the beta version of the career assessment tool. But some of the results it has produced, based on answers to 50 questions, have prompted mirth and despair among users.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/08/boxer-lock-keeper-government-careers-quiz-scorned-users-england

I got: Actor, Paramedic, Football referee, Boxer, Bingo caller, Bomb disposal technician, School matron, Racehorse trainer, Cake decorator, Fish frier, Butler, Seismologist ..

Follow your dream: https://beta.nationalcareers.service.gov.uk

Gareth Morgan
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I was offered information scientist, social care, IT developer and cake decorator.

We should open a patisserie together Shawn.

Elliot Kent
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I got cake decorator too… Might need to join you.

BC Welfare Rights
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In the unlikely event that I was ever to write an algorithm, I would definitely ask something like: Are you an elite athlete and closer to the womb than pipe n slippers?  before recommending considering a career as a professional boxer, footballer or cricketer.

Vonny
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dental hygienist - but all dentists are officially evil?
actor, soldier and cake decorator

so i act nice, make you a cake, ruin your teeth and then kill you?

HB Anorak
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John.

Oh sorry, I’m getting confused with “Which Beatle are you?”

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Professional boxer, football referee, or funeral director. Game on!!!

Va1der
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Answered the survey questions in my alter ego as a deranged military commander - got ornithologist, and… HR Manager!

Whatever you do, don’t try the chat service they offer… Get more sense out of a parrot.

Vonny
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if you answer all the questions as the least employable most objectionable person ever - guess what no jobs recommended, not even as a cabinet minister or PM

Dan Manville
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It’s all well and good being a paramedic or an actor but apparently I’d be no good as a lock keeper.

I wanna be a lock keeper!

annief
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I could be a stunt person. They obviously have seen me fall over my own feet ????

shawn mach
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Unfortunately, while the service seems to be simple to understand and accessible to use; what it seems to be missing is any level of context or practicality that would help it meet the problem it’s being used for.

While they have tested with users with accessibility needs, the focus seems to have been on whether they can use the digital service; not does the service actually meet their needs?

My friend with severe mobility and hearing issues was advised to retrain as a builder. Another friend with physical impairments (and a profound phobia of blood) was advised they were best suited to a role as a paramedic. A friend with ASD who also has severe anxiety and an aversion to people they don’t know, was advised to become a beautician. Another friend who is a single parent was given three career options that all required evening and weekend work. At no point does this service ask whether you have any medical conditions or caring needs that would limit the work you could do. While you can argue that that level of detail falls under the remit of a jobs coach; it can understandable be seen as insensitive and demoralising to be recommending careers to people they are physically unable to do.

Equally, unhelpful is the fact the service which has been especially recommended to people who have been made redundant from the worst hit industries; is recommending those same decimated industries to work in, with no recognition of the current jobs market.

https://www.zoeonthego.org/2020/10/07/and-this-is-why-we-test-with-users/

ROBBO
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It may be from 2007, but perhaps there’s hope for all the potential butlers out there :

“With only around 5,000 butlers working in the UK, the Guild of Butlers reckons that that number could double and they still wouldn’t lack for work”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/super-rich-vie-for-pound100000-butlers-trained-by-the-palace-403994.html

https://www.butlersguild.com/

Mairi
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Who’d have thought?  I appear to have already met my destiny work-wise.

3 general areas of employment I’m suited for apparently - Hospitality, Retail and Social care - worked in all of these sectors in the past.

Who’d have thought ‘it depends’ to so many questions would have read me like a book.  :-)

 

Andrew Dutton
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Among my selection:

Waiter, butler, butcher, fishmonger, prison officer, Royal Marines Officer.

I was looking for change of career….Ten-shun you ‘orrible lot! Tea will be served at 5.30pm. In the Drawing Room. Of B-Wing.

juliem
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Mmmm
Amongst others, football referee, lifeguard(they haven’t seen me swim!), microbrewer - that I like - and coroner. All jobs that can be trained for in an hour’s on-line session.
I think they have been stalking my hobbies. Has anyone found advice work on there - as in the answers I like researching material, telling people what to do, but I can cope if they don’t do as advised?

Andyp5 Citizens Advice Bridport & District
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I used Father Dougal from Father Ted, Morris from the IT Crowd, Bernard from Black Book and Martin from Bait as my inspirations and my would be role models! .

See below…...........

‘Your results
What you told us
Your answers show that:

We could not recommend any careers based on your responses. You might want to go through the assessment again to check that your responses were accurate’.

BC Welfare Rights
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Dan Manville - 09 October 2020 01:22 PM

It’s all well and good being a paramedic or an actor but apparently I’d be no good as a lock keeper.

I wanna be a lock keeper!

Back in the 1990s I was sick of my then job but had no idea what I wanted to do next. I took a year out, went travelling and thought long and hard about my future career. I came back with a dream job in mind, only to discover that there was not a single manned lighthouse left anywhere in the world.

Gareth Morgan
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BC Welfare Rights - 14 October 2020 01:44 PM

I came back with a dream job in mind, only to discover that there was not a single manned lighthouse left anywhere in the world.

I bet it’ll pop-up in a DWP submission.  Probably in a mobility appeal.

Chrissum
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Brings back the good ol days of the all works test. Car park attendant, anyone - nice easy job sitting down all day , clearly suited to the disabled (apart from the one where I used to work in Gloucester, where he was constantly attacked by seagulls - I’m sure that one is on google somewhere)? Oh wait, they are all automated now. Interesting that the military is coming up as an option. Are they trying to tell us something? Seriously, there seems to be a current campaign that anyone can be anything with a bit of training, completely disregarding the actualities of someone’s skills, health or personal circumstances, and I’m not just talking about ballerinas, here.

Pete at CAB
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I got, amongst others, aromatherapist, dog groomer, cake decorator, lifeguard (I’m 63!), beekeeper, ornithologist.

The first one reminds me of a Billy Connolly joke - things you will never hear at the scene of an accident “let me through, I’m an aromatherapist)

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Mind you, we should count ourselves lucky maybe, poor old Fatima wanted to be a ballet dancer but the government said she had to go and work in cyber security…..

nevip
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Back in 1975 when I left school there was a job advertised on the boards in my local Unemployment Benefit office for go-go dancers, aged between 16-19.  Sign of the times eh!

Rosie W
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It almost, sort of, worked for me. I got social care which then broke down into 48 different roles including money adviser. I don’t think it recognises welfare rights as a proper job (much like my parents didn’t).  But the whole thing is bizarre. Given I told it I don’t like planning my day to maximise my time, don’t like working around other people and don’t like following orders I’m surprised it came up with anything. Or does that reveal what it thinks of social care type work??

Disappointed not to get beekeeper though.

[ Edited: 15 Oct 2020 at 10:24 am by Rosie W ]
Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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nevip - 15 October 2020 10:05 AM

Back in 1975 when I left school there was a job advertised on the boards in my local Unemployment Benefit office for go-go dancers, aged between 16-19.  Sign of the times eh!

Did you apply?

nevip
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Paul_Treloar_AgeUK - 15 October 2020 10:47 AM
nevip - 15 October 2020 10:05 AM

Back in 1975 when I left school there was a job advertised on the boards in my local Unemployment Benefit office for go-go dancers, aged between 16-19.  Sign of the times eh!

Did you apply?

Considered it, but couldn’t find my hot pants

Va1der
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nevip - 15 October 2020 10:05 AM

Back in 1975 when I left school there was a job advertised on the boards in my local Unemployment Benefit office for go-go dancers, aged between 16-19.  Sign of the times eh!

You don’t have to go as far back as 75’
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-u-turns-after-telling-18978226

Don’t know if they were still suggesting it to 16 year olds though

Daphne
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You don’t have to go as far back as 75’
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-u-turns-after-telling-18978226

I was always particularly pleased that I featured in a Sun report with a picture of a pole dancer in their take on it ;)

(Please note I didn’t actually talk to the Sun!)

[ Edited: 15 Oct 2020 at 01:09 pm by Daphne ]
BC Welfare Rights
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Chrissum - 14 October 2020 04:11 PM

Car park attendant, anyone - nice easy job sitting down all day , clearly suited to the disabled (apart from the one where I used to work in Gloucester, where he was constantly attacked by seagulls - I’m sure that one is on google somewhere)?

Psycho the seagull : ) https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/exteriors-psycho-the-seagull-flying-at-don-weston-weston-news-footage/103817601

Ruth_T
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Most RN contributors will be too young to remember, but at one time the roles of Car Park Attendant and Lift Operator were occupations which were reserved for holders of a “Green Card” certifying registration as a Disabled Person.  There was also a quota system for larger employers; very few ever reached their quota of Green Card holders.