The ‘soft skills gap’ is a challenge faced by many employers. Emotional Intelligence has been identified as a key factor in determining long term employability and career progress and needs to be nurtured from the early stages of a career.
Contented Brothers are working with L’Oreal to create an immersive experience using VR (Virtual Reality) technology, making it easier for young people to develop the skills they need in a controlled environment so that they gain confidence right from the start of their working life.
Targeting non-graduate recruits who would not usually be considered for employment, the team are developing a VR training platform that will enhance the recruitment processes of larger organisations, opening up opportunities for learners from more diverse backgrounds. The Discovery Phase took the opportunity to work with the target user group to determine the likely user acceptance of using a VR experience to learn skills in this way.
They also explored further with larger employers what their recruitment practices were and what the blocks were to recruiting from a non-graduate pool and discovered that there were many perceived benefits of having a more diverse workforce if a way could be found to build those bridges.