A report by the Auditor General, ETC’s job matching service: Meeting the requirements of employers and registered job seekers, focuses on the effectiveness of the job matching service in addressing employers’ requirements, the measures to evaluate and assist job seekers and issues related to training offered by the ETC to registrants.

A number of initiatives designed to facilitate job matching and provide an improved and faster service to clients have been launched in recent years, the report says, especially the implementation of a new information system and improvements to the way employers are informed of job matching results.

The National Audit Office report, presented in Parliament, states that the corporation needs to continue to tackle a variety of obstacles in order to exploit the full potential of these initiatives.

The results of a survey that targeted private and public sector employers who used ETC’s job matching services during the period September 2004 to August 2005, shows that over 70 per cent of those interviewed reported an improvement in the job matching service, with 94 per cent stating they would use the service again.

“However, the majority of respondents were of the opinion that ETC needs to carry out more effective screening by submitting only the most suitable job-seekers to employers.”

On this issue, the NAO noted the need for more effective identification and monitoring of candidates by ETC, even in view of the challenge of managing a number of registrants who seem unwilling to work.

ETC makes use of structured profiling interviews to collect comprehensive inform-ation on job-seekers.

“There is, however, still more to be done to ensure that all registrants are immediately profiled soon after the timelines set out in the National Action Plan for Employment,” says the report.

“Delays in the conduct of these interviews have a direct impact on the quality of job matching process and submissions to employers.”

The report says that the corporation launched a number of courses aimed at providing specific training to registrants who are most at risk of remaining unemployed, yet “the majority of courses attended are obligatory ones and registrants are not applying on their own initiative. One of the key problems is the lack of understanding on the part of registrants of the need for them to undergo further training to improve their chances of employability.”

The NAO added that the corporation “also experienced high average waiting times for registrants to start a course after they have been identified as requiring training. ETC is aware of this backlog and has since embarked on measures to address this problem.”