September Round-up

Welcome to this month’s round-up – it’s a special one!

This month we published First Jobs, New Barriers, our deep dive into how technology can support young people without degrees as they move from education into work. It asks how technology can help young people – especially those without university degrees – get into work.

For founders and investors in this space, it doubles as a map of where the gaps are – and where we hope they will build and invest. So we’ve decided to give it the full spotlight this issue.

Here is what we’ve found…

The market that nobody is building for

Young non-graduates face the steepest transition into work, yet they’re the least well served by the tools built for it. In our experience as investors, most job-search platforms, mentoring services and career tools tend to target graduates, who already carry a degree, a network and an earnings cushion to soften an early stumble.

Four distinct gaps where there lie problems (in need of solutions)

We break this transition into four elements, each a question a young person has to answer, and each with points of failure a well-designed product could address:

1. Routes and next steps. Careers guidance concentrates in school and thins out just when the choices matter most. Training routes are the hardest to navigate.
2. Signalling and screening. Without a degree to signal ability, young people get filtered out by automated systems. 71 per cent of UK firms now use an applicant tracking system, and more than a third of those use it to screen candidates out; young jobseekers report that this is usually with no feedback.
3. Matching and retention. What looks like a motivation problem can be a matching problem set before the job even starts.

Resilience and confidence. 76 per cent of young people in one survey said their wellbeing affects their ability to look for work. A poor search knocks confidence, which makes the next application harder.

Where the strongest tech opportunities lie

So, what actually works?

Above, we’ve set out where the gaps are, but the harder question is what actually works to close them.

In the full report we give our view on the design principles that separate tools that reach this group from tools that lose them, and the single constraint that we think decides whether any of them survive contact with the market.

Read the full report for where we think founders should build, and what design principles they should follow to succeed. Read here: First Jobs, New Barriers.

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We accept applications from WorkerTech ventures on a rolling basis. You can book a slot in our office hours for an initial conversation.