Date:
16 May 2022
Your Name:Â Â
Sherry Coutu
Position:Â
Chairman
Solution Name:Â
Workfinder
Young people https://workfinder.com/candidates/Â
Enterprises:Â https://workfinder.com/partners/plans/Â
Legal Structure:
Company
Main Funding Source:
Companies Subscribe to our services (Monthly or annually) and students use services at no cost.
Phase(s) of Education:
Higher Education
Number of Students:Â
Number of current users of the solution 1.8 millionÂ
Purposes of Education supported:Â
work-readiness, transition to work
Solution Description:
Workfinder’s talent solutions provide enterprise teams with a trained talent pool and insights across gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic backgroundÂ
Clients subscribe on an annual or monthly basis and pay additional transaction fees which vary depending on the length of the project the talent is recruited for.
Trusted by young people who we help to acquire the right skills, mindset and project experience so they maximise their potential via personalised (Free) mentoring, (free) masterclasses, short-courses and (paid) project work.
Solution Origin:
We started the company to address the problem of 1.2 million open positions there were and the fact that getting a job was becoming increasingly difficult for young people, particularly if they were from a disadvantaged background or diverse in any other way.Â
Potential for systemic impact (EXCLUDING Equity)?
What does success look like?Â
Success looks like there not being 1.2 million open positions in the UK that are hard to fill and businesses not citing the talent crisis as their number one issue that is compromising their competitive advantage.
What would we see differently in our education system if the solution were widely adopted? Â
We would see 100% of young people over 16-25Â getting at least 100 hours of work experience each term and accumulating employability skills rapidly because they are accessible by employers for part-time roles.
Does the solution improve Equity? How?Â
We support hiring managers to prevent inadvertent bias in the interviewing and short-listing process.
We monitor how role descriptions are written and alert the authors when bias is detected with suggestions of how to remove the bias.
We monitor flow of candidates at an enterprise level and the way candidates are chosen for interviews. When bias is detected, we send alerts to the person alerting them to what we have detected, what the company’s policies are on DEI and suggestions of how to overcome the bias.Â
Our enterprise solutions report on progression of early careers talent with regards to gender, ethnicity, disability and socioeconomic disadvantage.
Our enterprise solutions contain feedback loops to the young person so they understand why they were not successful in their application and what our suggestions are regarding what steps they need to take in order to be successful next time.
Barriers to adoption relating to Accountability Rules and Funding Formulae:
Transition to work and employability skills do not seem to be an Ofsted priority,Â
Traditional careers software do not seem oriented to the needs of employers and do not allow for the correction of the bias when detected.
Other barriers to adoption:
Awareness of the solution
Additional Comments?
What haven’t we asked that is important?Â
This is free for students and can be white-labelled.Â