Virtual Work Experience

Inspiration

We provide over 1500 work experience placements in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Poland. Since the lockdown following the outbreak of Covid-19 all placements have canceled. We envision that mobility across borders will be a problem for some considerable time; meaning that participants won’t be able to undertake work experience placements. Work experience is often fundamental criteria for employers. Access to work experience increases employment opportunities.
The longevity of this project extends beyond the pandemic, as it facilitates opportunities for both remote and face to face work experience.

Our current database includes approximately 8000 vocational schools and 100s of thoroughly vetted workplace providers, that we have partnered with since 2004. We use thorough safeguarding and health and safety checks as part of our accreditations, and we ensure validity by issuing learning and training agreements.

What it does

Whilst not all work experience placements can be undertaken virtually many can. We intend to design and launch a platform to facilitate work experience. Our platform will provide the opportunity for employers to register their company and work experience (internship) placement opportunities. It will also allow candidates to register their data. The platform will then provide matching opportunities across variables inputted by all parties. So, for example, a company in Germany may have an opportunity for a Spanish speaking graphic designer to create a layout for its brochure in the Spanish market. A Spanish speaking placement candidate can, for example, be looking for opportunities to utilise their German skills whilst developing their graphic skill in a real project.

How I built it

We have a matching application that we call ‘TIM’ for Tellus Information Management. This is a placement matching tool for our staff to manipulate, once data from employers and candidates is inputted by themselves. Our current platform is .NET with a C# back-end and MSQL data-driven with an ASP front-end interface.

As you can see, our platform is beyond the prototype stage and ripe for development, in line with this project. We foresee allocating half of the grant to enhance the software scalability and the remainder towards marketing costs.

Via our existing Customer Relationship Management Platform, we have a multilingual chat function, which allows accessibility, no matter what language to speak.

Development time is a maximum of 3 months as it's an innovation on the existing platform

What's next for Virtual Work Experience

We plan to take this model and remove or reduce human intervention so that candidates and placement providers can be matched and soft compete for opportunities. We plan to use a cloud-based solution already implemented in our organization, Zoho CRM and Zoho recruit that would be connected to our in-house app (TIM).

We envisage free access for providers and candidates, with revenue to sustain the project being drawn from targeted in house and 3rd party advertising of relevant training services. We already offer our own professional development products and we would look to partner with others to develop new courses as the project expands.