Yesterday I went to the Charles St Jobcentre in Cardiff for my fortnightly signing. I arrived with a couple of minutes to spare and sat not far away from the desk where the lady who has seen me on the last two occasions was sat. She was dealing with someone else and roughly five minutes later I thought that I had heard someone call my name. I heard my name a second time so I got up and walked around and found a young guy sitting at a desk that was situated behind me. I confirmed with him that he had called my name and it turned out that he was my new advisor. He asked me for some sort of identification as he had not seen me before and I instantly showed him my debit card. I've shown my debit card on my last three visits to the Jobcentre and even though I don't have anything in the account until my next Jobseekers Allowance is paid in I think I will take a utility bill next time. He looked at my UJM account that I had ticked earlier to allow access and looked at my CV. He suggested that the main reason that employers would not interview me was the gap between my last work and suggested that volunteering would fill the gap. I have heard this from many advisors in the past and they just want to get us all doing volunteering so we will eventually rather take any kind of job that earns a salary than work for nothing for the rest of our working lives. When he mentioned volunteering I did say to him that I have had many advisors over the years and they all suggest volunteering. I suggested to him that I have done a number of work placements and they have never led to opportunities and maybe my age is a handicap. He said that someone works at the Jobcentre who is older than me and age isn't a barrier. He was polite and young and I didn't want to give him a hard time and of course he could cause a lot of grief with the bullying they can now get away with so I bit my tongue and held back from any confrontation. He looked at my CV and suggested that I take out my earliest work experiences so that the dates don't give away my age and only leave in the most recent work experiences. He also suggested taking out the dates that I completed certain basic computer courses such as ECDL and NVQ2. My response that I don't want to mislead employers wasn't accepted and my comment that an intelligent employer would be more aware of what isn't on a CV than what is actually on it wasn't commented on. I said that I would make the changes that he suggested so before the fortnight is over I will delete the CV on my UJM account and put a new one up. I asked him about the community action that is supposed to start in April for the long term unemployed and he said that he didn't have much information on it but suggested that it would be doing something that would be beneficial to the community such as working for a charity. I instantly responded by saying that charities were businesses and making great money for the people who run them and he replied that he could not comment on that. He allowed me to complete my fortnightly signing and when I asked if I would be seeing him in a fortnight he wasn't sure and told me to just come along at my usual time and someone would see me.