11 October 2024
A senior teaching fellow and Chartered Occupational Psychologist in Strathclyde’s Department of Work, Employment and Organisation has created a new cloud-based software platform designed to help disadvantaged people into work.
The tool – called MyEmploy – is based on Dr Joanna Butler’s 15 years of experience working in employability and skills providers organisations. It utilises questionnaires, machine learning and psychological research to understand jobseekers’ needs, provide tailored insights and predict outcomes. It is the first service of its kind to assess the impact of the jobseeker-adviser relationship.
Dr Butler said:
MyEmploy is Strathclyde Business School’s first spin out. We have achieved this through the support of Inspire, and through the stage-gated process, which has helped refine our idea and provided support and funding for the software development phase.
MyEmploy was awarded £10,000 from the Stephen Young Entrepreneurship Awards in November 2023 after having won an Inspire 100 pitch competition. While progressing through the commercialisation stage gated process, Dr Butler was connected with software development agency Loopsio, which offers cost effective development work by students, supervised by professionals.
Dr Butler added:
I don’t have a tech background, but Inspire introduced me to Loopsio, and the founder Omar has been invaluable in supporting the development of the tool. Working with Loopsio has been an essential part of the product development. Omar and his team not only sought to understand the intention behind the tool, but kept me on track with weekly meetings.
Now that MyEmploy has successfully spun out, and we have our first client, the next stage is market growth – looking at how we can expand our offer both in the UK and internationally, but also how we can join up with partners to create a more holistic customer journey.
MyEmploy operates on a subscription-based model and targets a market including the Scottish Government, Department for Work and Pensions, and welfare organisations.
Developing value
Another Inspire-supported Strathclyder that has found value in working with Loopsio is Industry Projects Manager Ross Methven, who is creating Aqueduct – an online tool that can utilise AI to help companies better access university expertise. For this project, Loopsio were able to build out a skeleton proposal for an MVP that could demonstrate the possibilities of the latest techniques in generative AI and coding applied to a use case.
Mr Methven said:
We developed a shortlist of requirements for the project, plus end goals and agreed on a timeline that worked for all involved – at a fixed-priced cost. Each of the students involved was professional and knowledgeable, contributing their ideas to help iterate the MVP each week. They were able to apply their studies in new ways to a real-world problem and see how it could add value in a wider context.
Come project closure, the team provided documentation and a handover, as well as potential phase two ideas that could be explored for further work. Hopefully, once Aqueduct is in full flow, we’ll be able to engage the team again to explore some new avenues.