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Your experience of Actiris? Ok ..bit of rant...
I accompanied someone (over 50, struggling to find work, not great French or Dutch ..so...ok..it was a tough case) today to Actiris to act as translator.
It was the single worst example of Customer service I have ever encountered in my entire life.
The initial registration was ok.
When it came to the interview with the job counsellor, she was slumped in her seat with her arms folded and was just short of a making a distainful face when she saw her client (presumably because of age/language issues).
Her expression throughout was one of distain and her interaction with the client consisted of abrupt pre determined questions 'Occupation?' ...Do you know about .......and she proceeded to list a long list of totally irrelevant categories of sub professions on some form we could not see. The categories were very technical and neither of us fully understood them.
She made no effort to actually communicate with us in any meaningful way. it was clear that she was simply going to 'tick the boxes' whether or not they had any use or relevance for the client.
When we asked to have a conversation about the clients actual situation, abilites, background and work interestes, she was not prepared to deviate from the pre determined questions which were useless to the situation
We asked to see the manager and he came out to us but said he was too busy to talk and the system required that if we had any complaint we would have to put it in writing. He shoved a mail address at us and refused to deal further with us, pointing at a notice that said all interviews must be in Dutch or French, despite the fact that I was speaking French. We were in no way aggressive, but we did point out to the woman that sitting slumped with her arms folded didnt give us the impression that she had any interest in actually helping her client find work.
I am curious to know if others have had similar or different expériences in Actiris offices?
soooooo typically Belgian... no notion of customer service, a will to help, always grumpy, doing you a favour in Actiris and everywhere else.
Your friend's situation is pretty much impossible, i know as i was there and very similar. forget about getting a job through Actiris, its a joke. young local bilingual people cant get a job, let alone a fifty something that isn't. Actiris is one of the hurdles one has to go through in Belgium in order to get unemployment. Only thing i used them for was a photoshop course that did not leave much impression. Good luck
He could have registered with Actiris on line. So simple.
I also went as a translator for a couple of friends, and had exactly the same experience as you did.
In these type of cases though, I've been fortunate enough to have been trained to use a bit of "human interaction" with people who have these type of attitudes so it always helps to deviate from the mundane task they have at hand, and converse with them and put them in center stage.
For the most part, this works wonders but yea, you do have to know how to strike up a quick conversation and shift the attention of the other person.
Yes, we definitely people shouldn't have to do this, but most people nowadays have jobs they don't like so not everyone is out there to give good customer service, and most simply don't give a bleep about helping you out.
Only place I never try this technique is at airports with the immig
In these type of cases knowing a bit about human psychology might break the spell with these clerks. In other words, I've deal with so much bureaucracy in life that what I do is start a "phony" conversation that puts the clerk's life in the center stage, and well, their level of helpfulness always changes after that. Same thing I do at the airports, restaurants, hotels, and most
I agree with JBMAC. Anyhow, I made my experience with Actiris and must say that they were pretty friendly to me (considering that my French is not excellent). Which is why I would't categorise these experiences as 'typical Belgian' as this can be anywhere in the world, especially in Western Europe, where public administration personnel does not make much efforts to be more client oriented towards the client, especially when it comes to people in need for a job and/or solutions.
My last experience with a counsellor was ridiculous as she was trying to impose me create a CV according to her template, which is completely irrelevant at that stage. She even thought that my CV looked more like an advertisement:) Well, apply online and avoid these ridiculous situations...this is the best solution!
