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This article examines the construction of the IT architecture in French Job Centres (Pôle emploi) and focuses on the process of finding jobs for unemployed people. It illustrates the fact that much software has been developed to solve the institution’s main dilemma (whether it should try to help all jobless individuals or find employment for only a certain number of them) and analyzes the failure of this attempt. Computerizing data about the struggle against unemployment reconfigures the contradictions surrounding employment policy by forcing actors to show strong respect for all of the objectives set out for them by the national employment policy. Software does not reduce the pressure exerted on schedules by the large number of unemployed people. Public actors lack the time to complete all of their tasks. They manage to artificially resolve these tensions by taking control of the placement software and the ERP.