work help: I’ve been out of work for a few years and i’m now - Help.com

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why do u get your benefits cut if you say you want to look for work?
I was in a similar situation but here my government recognizes people with health issues and is more than happy to help them look for work rather than penalizing them for it, theyed rather we feel optimistic in finding work than keep us on benefits for life
there are still places who will take you on if you can simply show them that you hav the skills to perform what they require or learn it quickly
I highly recommend cold calling heaps of local businesses (without telling your job search your doing so), but be prepared to walk out the door for an interview cause they may ask if you can come down to meet ‘now’
when you cold call you need to read between the lines, dont just look at obvious IT companies, look at things like libraries, they need IT professionals to keep their systems running and help them keep up to date
the post office may have a need for an IT trainee
even the car dealership may be happy to hire someone who can show them they can run their website
what sort of IT are you strong in?

I’m strong in diagnostics, fault finding, fixing PC’s, running servers (pre-server 2003) :S I also dable in writing websites and know HTML, CSS a little PHP and enough SQL to keep my site going - finding information about IT problems these days isn’t very hard and understanding the problems and relational ways of fixing things is pretty simple. But I honestly do fear for the benefits agency cutting my benefits. I live in the UK and i am currently on Incapacity Benefit - in order to start looking for work they would shift me to Job seekers and i would loose more than my rents worth and as i live at home still, it would be complecated. I would rather get into a job straight off - but finding my way back in the door mainly without references seems very difficult.