CareerTech Challenge

This project started in October 2019 and is ongoing

Funding applications - Closed

Open for submissions

16 October 2019

Applications close for Fund

09 December 2019

Entries close for Prize

29 January 2020

Final funding decisions made

31 March 2020

The £5.75 million CareerTech Challenge aims to encourage bold solutions to improve people’s working lives and unlock employment opportunities for the future through a Prize and a Fund. Submissions are now closed.

The future of work is changing, providing opportunities for new careers and novel ways of working. We want to help prepare the workforce and provide the right tools and technologies to enable people to envision their futures.

What are we doing?

Nesta is partnering with the Department for Education to launch the CareerTech Challenge.

The CareerTech Challenge includes a prize and a fund:

The prize will reward digital solutions that improve access to accurate, data-driven career information, advice and guidance.
The fund will provide grant funding for innovative tech solutions which motivate people and support them to learn new skills and retrain

Why are we doing this?

Almost half of all employees in the European Union experienced a change in their working practices as a result of technology in the five years prior to 2017. The accelerating development of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, is expected to have a more dramatic impact on people’s jobs in almost every sector.

But technological progress is not the only driver that is shaping the future world of work. Nesta’s collaboration with Oxford University and Pearson revealed six more trends, among them globalisation, urbanisation and demographic change, that will influence the demand for different types of skills in the coming decades.

In this complex picture, two things are clear: people need to be prepared to learn new skills throughout their careers, and they must be given accurate and impartial guidance that helps them to find good work.