Career Tech Challenge

*This challenge is only open to individuals and organizations based in the UK, or who have a lead partner based in the UK

What is the CareerTech Challenge Prize?

Equipped with the right knowledge, people can plan for secure and rewarding future careers. People need to be able to understand the jobs and skills which are likely to be in demand, and the pathways to attain them.

The CareerTech Challenge Prize will provide £1.2 million and tailored packages of expert support for the development of digital solutions which improve career information, advice and guidance. Solutions will combine innovative uses and sources of labour market information to make high-quality, localised advice and guidance more accessible.

We want to support people to imagine their future careers and find out how to get there.

Nesta Challenges invites those with an interest in ‘future-proofing’ the workforce to propose digital solutions to improve access to the information and guidance people need to pursue fulfilling careers.

Entries are open to any individual, organisation and group based in the UK, or who have a lead partner based in the UK.

The solutions should benefit employed adults in England who are aged over 24 years, without a qualification at degree level and earning less than £35,000 per year, with a focus on those in roles likely to significantly change or shrink.

For a full description of the guidelines for this challenge see the CareerTech Handbook here. 

What we're looking for

In today’s world, people will likely have several careers during their working lives. Understanding the skills they have and knowing the career options available to them in the near and longer term future is a challenging proposition but this does not need to be the case.

We’re looking for digital solutions that use labour market information to support people to make better-informed decisions about their future careers. Solutions should generate actionable insights, be easy to use and proactively reach out to users. We want people to have access to digital solutions that will support them to imagine their future careers and find out about the pathways to get there.

Solutions should benefit members of the National Retraining Scheme cohort: 

• employed adults in England who are aged over 24 years
• without a qualification at degree level  and earning less than £35,000 per year
• with a focus on those in roles like to significantly change or shrink.

Solutions we're open to

We’re looking for highly innovative digital solutions which improve career information, advice and guidance by combining innovative uses and sources of labour market innovation with proactive outreach.

The solutions should benefit employed adults in England who are aged over 24 years, educated to below degree level and earning less than £35,000 per year, with a focus on those in roles like to significantly change or shrink.

We encourage highly innovative entries and are open to any digital solution that could deliver against our prize statement. 

The Prize is open to ‘stand-alone’ solutions or ‘plug-in’ solutions that could be added to other platforms or solutions to enhance them. 

The Prize is open to completely new, early stage ideas or existing solutions that are pivoting or adding new elements or functionality. If selected as a finalist, entrants will develop and test their solutions during the Prize’s 9 month finalist stage. When the Prize ends in March 2021, we expect solutions to have reached (at a minimum) an advanced prototype stage; undergone user testing; and to be nearing market readiness. 

Eligibility

• The Prize is open to entries from any type of organisation or group, as well as individuals aged 18 years or over. Consortium or partnership entries are encouraged.
• Entrants must have the skills and capacity to develop their solution during the Prize.
• Solutions must be suitable for beneficiaries in England.
• Entrants must be UK-based. If they are not UK-based, they must be partnered with a UK-based organisation. The UK-based organisation must be the lead partner for the entry.
• Intellectual property – entrants must own, or have written permission to use the intellectual property relevant to their entry. All entrants need to demonstrate a willingness to share information about their solution for the purposes of the Prize.
• We cannot fund activity which is party-political in intention, use, or presentation, nor to support or promote religious activity.
• Employees of Nesta, other individuals or organisations working on the Prize, and their immediate families, are not eligible to enter.
• Successful entrants who applied as individuals must be willing to set up a legally incorporated organisation within the UK to receive funding. You will be able to use some of that funding towards reasonable expenses incurred through the incorporation process.

Our Vision

In today’s world, people will likely have several careers during their working lives. Understanding the skills they have, and knowing the career options available to them in the near and longer term future is a challenging proposition, especially for those in the National Retraining Scheme (NRS) cohort. This does not need to be the case. The Prize will help to bridge the gap between the NRS cohort and their future careers by incentivising the development of digital solutions that use labour market information to make high-quality, future focused information, advice and guidance more accessible. We want people to have access to innovative digital solutions that will support them to imagine their future careers and find out about the pathways to get there. 

The digital solutions the Prize supports will take an innovative approach to the use and/or sources of labour market information. This, coupled with a focus on the needs of NRS cohort members, will provide high-quality actionable information. This may be delivered through a variety of means, including, but not limited to: 

• Making local/contextual and future-facing labour market information available to a variety of users (individuals, careers professionals, local councils, media, etc.) who are either members of the NRS cohort or working/supporting members of the NRS cohort;
• Using that labour market information to support users' decision making and help them consider a wider range of future jobs, training or activity

Target Beneficiaries

While consensus seems to be forming around technological change driving a net increase in the quality and quantity of jobs, some job roles across a number of sectors in England are projected to be more susceptible to shrinkage than others.

Examples of roles in sectors most likely to experience shrinkage include (but are not limited to): 

• Retail roles including sales assistants, vehicle trades and elementary sales, records, administrative and finance roles;
• Logistics roles including vehicle trades and elementary administrative, records and finance roles;
• Manufacturing roles including process, assembly, plant and machine operatives and metal forming, welding and related trade roles.

What to Consider When Developing Your Solution

This Prize is a challenge prize. Challenge prizes offer a reward to whoever can first or most effectively meet a defined challenge. A challenge prize works by setting out the goal (in its Prize Statement) and how success against that goal will be measured (in its Judging Criteria) without predetermining what solutions should look like or how they should deliver. 

The CareerTech Challenge Prize welcomes a wide range of entries. We don’t know what the winning solution will look like, however our research identified a number of considerations that would help solutions deliver against the Prize’s aims (as set out in the Prize Statement below). 

To be effective, solutions will need to proactively engage members of the NRS cohort and provide them with straightforward, actionable and local recommendations to help them plan for their future careers. Innovations will need to draw on the wide range of new and traditional sources of labour market information that exist and make this information accessible and useful for the NRS cohort. Innovators should consider the following points when developing their solution: 

1. Make it local

While a suitable foundation of labour market information exists at the national level, members of the NRS cohort need careers information, advice and guidance that is future-focused and relevant to them. There is a need to boost the quality and availability of local labour market information, and make it available to people in an exciting way. Career decisions are for the long term, so it is not enough to know what jobs are available in a local area now. Solutions could leverage the work of Skills Advisory Panels, Local Enterprise Partnerships and other sources of labour market information to help people understand the types of skills likely to be in demand in future. If done correctly, this could help to excite people in the NRS cohort about the future of their careers. 

2. Make it straightforward

Solutions should make it as simple as possible to get relevant career information, advice and guidance; choose between different options; and find training providers. There is currently a gap in the market for these comprehensive services tailored for the NRS cohort. Moreover, in a growing marketplace of online, blended and traditional training pathways, users can be overwhelmed Page 8 Version 1 by choice and easily miss suitable providers at the same time. This can undermine people’s career adaptability skills over time. There is a need for simple and comprehensive solutions that expand people’s career horizons and give them the tools they need to bring their future careers to life. 

3. Make it proactive

Solutions should acknowledge the barriers faced by many members of the NRS cohort in engaging with careers advice and guidance. Most people are focused on their everyday life and so solutions should seek to proactively engage with users, rather than relying on the users coming to them. Solutions which combine tailored support and proactive outreach to members of the NRS cohort have the potential to make significant impact. 

4. Build career adaptability skills

A final issue is that many platforms and solutions fulfill a singular purpose - they offer careers advice, or they train people - when they should actively work to build users’ career adaptability. Career adaptability is the ability of a person to be more prepared for changes to their work and the job market. Entrants are encouraged to design their solutions in a way that enable users to be more prepared for changes to their work and the job market. Approaches to build career adaptability skills and / or learner motivation could involve: 

• Personalising content and delivery to meet and respond to individuals’ preferences and experiences;
• Helping people feel that reskilling is attainable and achievable, even if the individual or their peer group has not previously engaged in further education, or has had a negative experience of learning;
• Increasing our target beneficiaries’ motivation and agency to explore options for their future careers;
• Introducing a social component to provide additional support and direction.

Judging Criteria

This section outlines the criteria that will be used to assess and select our finalists and, eventually, the winner. The same Judging Criteria will be used throughout the Prize, as they allow our judges to compare very different digital solutions and how well these solutions could deliver against the prize statement. 

In the initial assessment period judges will be looking for an applicant's potential to meet these criteria. Upon final assessment, to become the winner, the judges will expect each finalist to demonstrate and justify how their solution addresses each of the criteria below and meets the Prize Statement

Criterion 1: Innovation 

Solutions should integrate and build on labour market information, in new or innovative ways, to generate actionable insights about people’s future careers. This could be achieved by: 

• Combining or using labour market information in new ways to improve information, advice or guidance for target beneficiaries, including (but not limited to) insights into the future labour market and local labour market information.
• Solutions that improve the Prize’s target beneficiaries’ career adaptability in comparison to existing solutions

Criterion 2: Insight & impact 

Solutions should combine insights into the future of the labour market with an understanding of the Prize’s target beneficiaries, their needs, and motivations. They should expand target beneficiaries’ career horizons and support their decision making, which may include helping them to discover training pathways. By the end of the Prize, finalists must demonstrate how they have developed and improved their solutions in response to their understanding of the target beneficiaries. This could be achieved by: 

• Solutions that utilise comprehensive and future-focused labour market information to generate robust insights that benefit target beneficiaries.
• Solutions that can demonstrate that their in-depth understanding of target beneficiaries has improved the information, advice or guidance provided.
• Solutions that can demonstrate that their intervention gives target beneficiaries agency by expanding their career horizons and supporting their decision making.
• Solutions that generate improved career information, advice or guidance for the target beneficiaries that is tailored to their needs, motivations and requirements.

Criterion 3: Accessibility & usability

Solutions should demonstrate that they’re easy and enjoyable to use, taking into account users’ digital literacy and preferences for accessing the solution. Users should find the solution to be intuitive and reflective of their needs. Solutions should be able to service one or more profiles of users, which may include target beneficiaries and/or organisations that work with or support them. By the end of the Prize, finalists should have engaged potential users. This could be achieved by: 

• Solutions users can easily interact with, that quickly generate actionable information, advice or guidance.
• Solutions that understand and reflect the needs of diverse users, and how they’re able to access and use it.
• Solutions that integrate techniques to encourage user engagement, such as gamification, nudges and/or an enjoyable user interface.
• Solutions that proactively encourage target beneficiaries’ engagement, techniques could include connecting them with peers, career professionals or those that could support them.

Criterion 4: Market potential

By the end of the Prize, solutions should be able to demonstrate that there is a market of sufficient size to facilitate sustainability, successful commercialisation and the growth potential of their solution. They should be accessible and affordable to their potential users, and demonstrate a broader understanding of their needs. Solutions should proactively communicate with and reach out to potential users. This could be achieved by: 

• Solutions with a sound implementation and/or business plan, which address an identifiable need for a target market of sufficient size.
• Solutions that build on rigorous research or understanding of the market and their potential users.
• Solutions that reach out to and help potential users understand the benefits of their solution, encouraging them to engage with it.

Financial Support

To support innovators to develop their solutions, each of the 20 finalists will receive a £50,000 grant to develop and test their solution. In March 2021, we will announce which of our finalists has been selected as our winner and our runner-up. They will each receive further awards of £120,000 and £80,000, respectively, to help get their solutions to market. 

Non-Financial Support

During the Prize, in addition to the financial support, finalists will have access to capacity development support to help develop their digital solutions. This in-kind support will be tailored to the needs of innovators while ensuring equity of support and access. The nature of this support will be discussed with finalists once they are selected.

Submitting Your Entry

Entries are submitted online through Submittable, Nesta’s online application management platform. Entries must be submitted by 14:00 GMT on 29 January 2020. Submittable is a third party platform. For more information on Submittable see our Terms and Conditions and the Submittable privacy policy. Before completing your form, make sure that you’ve: 

• Read this handbook, our Terms and Conditions and the FAQs
• Set up your login on Submittable
• Reviewed the PDF version of our entry form
• Familiarise yourself with yourself with the prize statement and the Judging Criteria and make sure you clearly address them in your entry form If you are ready to enter, go to the entry page on our website.