Voice Technology to Help Labour Market Recovery in Recession

CareerEar rebrands to Earlybird and launches innovative onboarding software powered by voice technology and generative AI. Earlybird is empowering employability providers to save time and money and support more job seekers into quality sustained employment.

The CBI has already predicted that 40% more people will be unemployed by the end of the year. Employability providers – independent organisations that secure public funding to support people into work – will play a critical role in the UK’s recovery from this recession. However, the Earlybird team found that employability providers faced significant challenges onboarding job seekers onto their programmes. 

Earlybird’s software provides job-seekers access to a conversational chatbot to which they can respond using their voice to communicate their interests, skills and barriers to work ahead of meeting an employment adviser. The software’s audio analytics then extracts useful summarised insights to employability providers, equipping their advisors to deliver tailored support from their first meeting.

Previously, the team had built CareerEar, a digital careers support platform that had supported a community of over 3,000 people to explore and discover careers, get advice from people in various industries and access career opportunities including training and jobs. However, after the team conducted research with employment advisors in the sector, they realised there was a significant opportunity to improve the onboarding process and developed Earlybird to respond to the need. 

“From our research, we saw a huge opportunity to empower the fantastic people doing the work every day to help job seekers to achieve their career potential.  By equipping employment advisers with deep insights and helping them to understand their participants from day 1, they are in a much better position to build trust quickly. This is critical to supporting an individual to overcome their barriers and not only access but also sustain employment.” said Claudine Adeyemi (pictured), CEO of Earlybird. 

“With the recent advancements in voice technology, we have been able to build truly innovative software that uses technologies such as OpenAI to offer an exceptional user experience to job seekers who just want to feel heard, valued and supported.”

The Earlybird team, headquartered in London and funded by Resolution Ventures, believes that voice technology has the power to revolutionise onboarding and is committed to supporting the advancement and impact of the employability sector with its technology.