The government has drawn up plans to scrap its official jobs website, Universal Jobmatch, after recognising it is too expensive and that its purpose is undermined by fake and repeat job entries, according to leaked internal communications from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
A cache of documents seen by the Guardian details how the government's main website for job hunters – which tens of thousands of unemployed people have been required by the DWP to sign up to – is likely to be jettisoned when the contract for the service comes up for renewal in two years.
At the start of March, the DWP removed more than 120,000, or one-fifth, of all job adverts from over 180 employer accounts, because the ads did not abide by the site's terms and conditions.
O'Donnell said: job centres used to have good checks before the site was launched. It used to be, to put a job in a job centre, a recruitment agency had to call and identify themselves, go through various checks and identify the employer." However without those checks he said many more anonymous postings were being hosted under the DWP's logo. "Anonymous job adverts are terrible. [The job] may or may not exist. It might just be a fishing trip for other information."
O'Donnell said: job centres used to have good checks before the site was launched. It used to be, to put a job in a job centre, a recruitment agency had to call and identify themselves, go through various checks and identify the employer." However without those checks he said many more anonymous postings were being hosted under the DWP's logo. "Anonymous job adverts are terrible. [The job] may or may not exist. It might just be a fishing trip for other information."