Founders4Schools have enhanced their Workfinder platform, designed to inspire young people and connect them to successful growth businesses, using a recommendation engine tailored to helping young women improve their chances of accessing work placements in tech/STEM sectors matched to their skills and interests.
It overcomes the tendency for work placements to be accessed via family or friends which can limit opportunities in tech sectors; and will help plug the gender gap in STEM/Tech careers. The project is testing how the Workfinder messaging service can be more effectively trained to meeting the needs of young women, using algorithms to train the bot to generate tailored messages based on the best options according to the user’s profile. If a student’s first application is unsuccessful, it generates a message suggesting the next best match. Once the bot is proven to be successful and reliable it will be rolled out into the generic platform, increasing scalability and future growth.