FutureRising: Identifying talent for the creative, digital and tech industries through the provision of careers advice

FutureRising

Introduction

FutureRising identifies talent for the creative, digital and tech industries through the provision of careers advice in universities.

Our careers events identify students and graduates with an interest in these industries. The challenges we set show us what skills they have, the smart bit is running it all through our web-based platform so we can match talent to employers.

Both companies and educational institutions join as members, we currently have 32 companies and 18 universities paying the £500 annual fee. If a company wants to hire talent, they do so by paying for a FutureRising to run a workshop (£1,500) where 25 matched candidates come and complete a challenge and meet the employer. Or companies can simply identify matched candidates through job postings on the platform. Paying 10% on their salary.

We’ve already put over 30 graduates into work as a result of our first academic year. The platform has over 3,500 students and graduates on board thanks to our university engagement.

Intended impact

FutureRising addresses the need for change in the education and recruitment industries to tackle issues around employability.

Over time, we aim to work with all universities, colleges and schools to increase the employability of their students. Simultaneously we prepare young people with the skills they need and provide working opportunities for them to start their careers.

Through membership and our services, we have a revenue stream for students, companies, universities and hope to see the following changes over time.

• Skills shortage reduced for the fast growing industries in our economy. Over 750,000 digitally skilled workers required before 2020.
• Employability scores at universities increased, this is now their key measure for attracting new students.
• SME’s competing with large companies, our platform aims to provide a level playing field when accessing the best talent.
• It’s always been our purpose to bring education and industry together; we’ve proven that we can do that and created a business model to drive it forward.

The biggest change will be in the area of careers advice.

By recognising that professionals in industry are the best people to deliver careers advice and running events to provide them a platform to give advice, FutureRising’s company members raise awareness and engage with talent.

Measuring the talent through event or online challenges and recording this on students profiles puts our platform into a distinctive position of accurately matching talent to opportunities.

Over time, the quality of careers advice would become the driving factor behind parents and young people’s education decisions with FutureRising at the heart of it, providing services that deliver increased employability.

Substantial accomplishments to date

• We’ve run over 50 events.
• We raised £50k from senior industry leaders in January 2014.
• We currently have 32 company members and 18 university members, including companies such as BBH, OMD, Rufus Leonard, MediaMath, Quantcast, M&C Saatchi PR, Northern & Shell and universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Southampton, Middlesex and Bournemouth.
• We built our bespoke platform from scratch at a cost of £30k.
• There are over 3,500 students and graduates with profiles on our platform.
• We hit over 10,000 views a month and the average visitor to the platform spends 3 minutes on the site.
• 30+ people placed in internships and graduate roles as a result of our first academic year.
• We have a social media following of over 3,000 on Twitter and facebook.
• We have FutureRising societies in place at universities across the UK who act as ambassadors for our brand.

Use of proceeds

People, processes, network engagement, premium features.

FutureRising will hire key people in tech development, events management, recruitment, marketing, new business and client services.

Our focus will be developing our platform to meet the specific needs of students, graduates, HR professionals and careers advisers.

We plan to activate more student ambassadors and societies across the UK to increase engagement.

We plan to build out premium membership service and launch in Q3 2016, ahead of the new academic year.

We plan to employ a number of interns on a rolling talent development programme.

All of the investment will ultimately go into improving the products and services we have in order to grow and serve our huge potential audience.

The Company currently has an outstanding loan of £50,000 with a 5 year term. Investment proceeds from this investment round will not be used to repay the loan.

Source: ICNW