720586Advanced Candidate profiling for Employment - ACEClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKRecruitment market (worth £25.7bn/yr in UK, £273bn/yr globally) is broken (REC, 2013). Lack of adequate recruitment support is a major factor in the high rate of 10% graduate unemployment (46% higher than avge) (BBC, 2013) and causes long-term employment issues for candidates; 6mths unemployment at early age leads to £50k lifetime wage losses, costing UK an estimated £77bn/yr (Impetus, 2014). While candidates struggle to stand out, employers (particularly SMEs) have increasing problems to find the right talent: skills shortage vacancies nearly doubled since 2009 and employers receive 85 applications per graduate job advertised (UKCES, 2014). Intern Avenue (IA) has identified an opportunity to automate and optimise recruitment via Advanced Candidate profiling for Employment (ACE). ACE will generate accurate matching scores between candidates and employers by combining and verifying web-based information on a candidate’s experience and skills with IA’s own personality profiling and psychometric testing tools. ACE will identify the most relevant candidate matches, providing recruitment guidance for employers and career diagnostics for candidates. IA was founded by Dupsy Abiola, UK Gov’t Advisor on youth unemployment and 4yrs Barrister at Fishburns Solicitor, where she designed and managed the firm’s Trainee recruitment assessment protocol. With a highly experienced team in R&D and commercialisation, and market recognition via high profile media coverage incl. FT, Channel4, Wired and BBC Dragon’s Den, IA has the necessary skills to successfully complete this project and exploit its outcomes. TSB support will enable IA to develop ACE initially focusing on UK-based employers, stimulating growth of the UK recruitment sector and accelerating commercial innovation. This will increase the likelihood of IA gaining first-mover advantage and placing ACE further ahead of the competition, improving the UK’s position in the fast-growing global recruitment market.