WCIT MONITOR WCIT Charity Quarterly Dec 2019 | Page 2

Charity Quarterly
Workfinder
Enabling students to find a future they’ll
love, to discover exciting career
opportunities and explore the working
world on their terms, in just a few taps.
Founders4Schools (F4S) is an award
winning charity whose goal is to prepare
all young people for the jobs of the future
and provide them with opportunities that
will help them have high-impact careers.
Teachers, students and employers are
given the opportunity to come together
through meaningful encounters that are
backed up by the latest evidence and are
outlined in the Gatsby benchmarks on
careers guidance.
By way of early intervention, F4S
addresses the underlying issues in
children and young people’s lives, which
prevent them from achieving their full
potential, believing that they can instead
lead successful, enterprising lives.
Work experience is a great way to learn
more about the world of work and gain
valuable skills and experience that look
great on a CV. To further enhance
employability prospects, F4S developed
Workfinder, a work experience service
that puts the young person at the centre
of the search process. It enables young
people to search from their mobile
devices and apply for work experience
placements with local businesses, no
longer inhibited by a parental network or
lack of school resources.
Understanding the transition to work has
never been more important to learners or
to our society. In 2017, 93% of
business leaders of
fast-growing
companies claimed
their number one
worry was the skills of
the students leaving
school.
This growing skills gap, particularly in
STEM subjects, means the UK is
falling behind when other countries are
making bold moves to help students
develop highly transferable skills.
Regular contact between business and
students is crucial.
Generously supported by the WCIT
Charity, Workfinder makes dynamic,
high-growth companies discoverable to
students through developing local
Business Leader Networks, engaging
influencers and providing a
Recommendation Engine - an embedded
service within Workfinder which sends
email notifications to students with
‘recommendations’ lists of different
companies to which they should apply. All
this is monitored through a teacher
dashboard service, empowering teachers
to monitor and guide the progress of their
students’ work.
Workfinder levels the playing field
between students, providing the
fundamental skills that open up increased
opportunities for employment to all young
people, particularly those from
disadvantaged backgrounds.
This year, through the Workfinder
platform, Ashley (age 15) from Bristol
was able to find work experience with
Vistair - a fast growing company which
provides the technology and solutions
that enable the aviation industry to deliver
world class levels of efficiency, safety
and compliance.
During the work placement Ashley was
able to learn from various departments in
the company. The placement benefitted
Ashley not only through nurturing skills
development but also, as Vistair CEO, Ian
Herbert, noted “through basic
conversations and chatting” Ashley learnt
how the business works as a whole.
Having read Ashley’s CV, submitted
through Workfinder’s platform, the Vistair
team members decided to provide a basic
understanding of software development
for aviation and importantly, demonstrated
how the technical development is rooted
in a “creative process and is not just a
manufacturing environment” effectively
seeing how applying it in practice differs
from the theory.
Workfinder not only supports young
people find valuable work experience at
fast growing companies, supporting their
skills development and preparing them for
the world of work, it also supports
companies reach the next generation
of talent.
Founders4Schools is grateful for the
support that the WCIT Charity has
provided during the development phase.
With funding provided, F4S was able to
implement a number of changes to the
platform including development of an
evidence engine, the teacher dashboard,
business leader onboarding and sign-up
and commercialisation modelling, which
will ultimately enable Workfinder to
become a self-sustaining product.