JobWave-waste of time and money

The Surrey office is run by women exclusively and these women just love the empowerment they have been given. There is way too much focus on political correctness and the "classroom" rules neither of which are practiced by the facilitators nor most offices in the private or public sector anyway. They tend to treat the "students" as if they were seriously mentally challenged and void of any education at all. Even those who are in need of temp assistance and well educated are "tossed into the heap" for the treatment. The Ministry of Human Resources apparently automatically mandates anyone into this program regardless of their background,education or health requirements in order to get them off the dole (unless they have connections). The government of BC has once again wasted huge sums of OUR money in a make work project for a few people employed by jobwave. Most of the clients interviewed (simple questions asked at break time outside the building in Surrey BC) revealed a fear of losing benefits if they complained. The people employed at job wave appear to be concerned more about their own well being,status and job security than the success of their mandated clients employability. The typical response of clients was that they were in a kind of prison with the facilitators acting (in a very real way) as self appointed prison guards or mean school teachers and often treating the clients in this manner. If you are a client do not question the facilitators or probe as it is common practice to label you as a troublemaker. You will then face the "case co-ordinator" to give your side of the story. This will then be sent along with any complaints the facilitators have against you to a "higher up" (ministry worker?) who will listen to you and then usually take the side of his or hers facilitators ( In other words your complaints will be payed lip service-and we all know what thats like don't we?). Be prepared to give up any dignity,privacy and a number of rights you may have in order to participate in this farce of a program. (Owned by a US based corporation that was unable to secure support in the US-check out the web and find out for yourselves) The people administering this program have lots of paperwork to give to you with all sorts of information on them about job searching most of which could be summed up in a single half hour information seminar and that would be far more environmentally friendly. (They do in all fairness have some computers for job searches) Somehow they manage to stretch this half hour of information into weeks and weeks . As a test one client brought a resume prepared by a member of Canadian Career Development and it was dismissed as being unsuitable and poorly done!
Do not take anything with you that may have any advertisement or anything else they may deem on a whim is unacceptable (there may be recovering substance abusers and you could make them relapse) If you smoke you will be asked to wash your hands after for those who are attempting to quit (especially if it's a facilitator-actual report by a former mandated client of jobwave)
If you are deemed a troublemaker (easy to do) be advised they will have plenty of written testimonials praising them and the program. This is a favorite trick of many organizations such as Work Safe (formally WCB) and other provincial agencies. This is of course designed to deflate you and give you a sense of helplessness and the idea of no where to turn for help.
Some of what you can expect is 7 hrs a day in this building (yes human resources workers 7 not the three you were told at an info session),poor heating and air conditioning the constant drone of often obvious "information" being imparted to you by the facilitators,standing only lineups to get into the signup office (every day) much like the typical social assistance office. Like your life isn't already miserable enough right?
The facilitators seem to be undereducated and poorly equipped in skills (including the basics like spelling and math etc but it's hard to make a determination as they reveal as little as possible about their qualifications or selves while gathering as much information on you as possible (presumably to cover their own butts and legitimize their own employment)
Often there are two facilitators in the room. One will provide the "instruction" while the other compiles computer reports based on observing the individuals in the classroom. What happens to that information they gather? It's unlikely it remains private regardless of any laws in place and what are their qualifications for any determinations they may make? (Please don't give me any c@!p on the so called privacy protection, a good lawyer or connection in the gov can open just about any file anywhere)
All in all this jobwave is a farce and a waste of money and time. How many employers have hired from this program and for how long? A much better approach would be job training or retraining for those who are serious about being employed. This would keep the money here in this province by employing qualified tradespeople or others who actually work in an occupation in BC. Such a program as this could be used for example to retrain the jobwave employees into something that is of real value and service to the people of this province.
Check out what I'm saying here it's on the web and there are a number of people out there enduring (without any say at all) this huge error of the gov of BC.