A bit about the Job Centre where I work

I work in a municipal building in San Juan de Miraflores. It’s a quite a large 5 storey concrete building with security at all entrances where they check your bags on the way out to make sure that you’re not stealing supplies from the municipality.

San Juan de Miraflores is part of metropolitan Lima in the Cono Sur region (or the south cone) formed by the waves of immigration into Lima from the countryside  in the 1960s. San Juan de Miraflores is built on the edges of Lima up into the dry desertic hills. This part of Lima counts 350,000 people. Here, 24% of the youth are neither working nor in school.

The public washrooms on my floor are a BYO style of facility. No toilet paper or soap is on offer so going to the washroom involves grabbing a few supplies first. At least once a week the water gets cut off without warning and we have no running water for flushing or hand washing.

Every day, 1 to 5 businesses send reps to our centre to pre-screen candidates. We post the list of businesses on a facebook page and the business themselves advertise in the local newspapers.  The turnout is phenomenal. We get anywhere from 20 to 70 people every day coming to apply for positions. I’m told that they’ve seen as many as 200 job applicants in one day.

The businesses tend to be supermarkets, sales companies, cleaning companies, and security companies (security guards abound in Peru – from private property to grocery stores).

Every week we give a 2 day workshop in the afternoons that is basically an introduction to job search covering everything from making a resume to interview tips. Usually we have about 15 to 20 youth sit in. And yes, we usually send those that have signed up in advance a text message the morning of to keep turn out high.

We also run a youth entrepreneurship program twice a year and we’re about to launch the call out for applications for a new group to start in October.

We have a group of youth volunteers who come in to help out in the centre in various ways, including acting as the first point of contact for people coming in and looking for work. My official role is to keep the volunteer program running smoothly.

Across the street is a little shop that doesn’t look like much, but is our everything store. They do photocopies, sell office supplies, top up your cell phone, and will sell you gum in individual packages. Just want one? In Peru, that’s no problem.