i work 39 hours a week and i can't afford christmas. You've applied for 500 jobs in one week? you can't be focusing on so many and getting anywhere, be more selective, there is no way you could have been the right candidate for all those 500 jobs, you need to register with online job sites but set your filters in a detailed way so as to avoid wasting your time, if you sent off 500 applications the lack of success will have a bigger impact on you, the job centre have computers that you can use to search for yourself, the people in the job centre are clerks, not experts in employment.