Udrafter helps students gain paid work experience!

As more and more businesses look to technology to help them gain competitive advantage, Udrafter have started a business which not only helps students gain paid work experience but also helps businesses get access to key skills…

How we got the idea for the business:

Developed by brothers Daryll and Luke Morrow in June 2017, the duo spotted a gap in the market after facing frustrations with the lack of access to flexible and paid work experience opportunities for students and recent graduates. Having started as an idea as part of a Masters module at Robert Gordon University, the founders took the opportunity to analyse the market and the businesses potential.

Udrafter is now and on demand and real time student work experience platform where trusted businesses can draft in skilled students to complete one-off jobs or bite size projects within hours, even minutes.

How we went about setting it up:

We originally started by speaking to anyone we could think of that needed odd jobs done, and were willing to pay students to

do it for them, e.g gardening, moving boxes, waitering, social media marketing, the list goes on. We must have filled 30 odd jobs for fun, which quickly validated that what we were doing was in demand. We then pivoted slightly by focusing on they key social issue at hand - jobs that were relevant to students degrees, which is one of the areas we struggled with most as students ourselves.  It cost us £12 to incorporate as a business, and since then we have been building the company with help from Elevator UKs 12 week accelerator programme, the newly formed RGU accelerator, and recent private investment.

Key objectives of the company:

Our objective is to bridge the transitional skills gap between education and the work place by giving students an opportunity to taste the world of work, before they have even graduated. Businesses benefit by having direct access to a large pool of student talent without the expense of hiring a full-time employee. Whilst only having launched in February this year in Aberdeen, our ambitions are to grow UK wide and to international markets including the U.S. We now have over 550 students and 81 businesses registered on the platform in Aberdeen, and this is growing everyday.

Udrafter is not confined to any one subject but successful projects that have been completed to date include: Digital marketing support, social media strategy, web development, mechanical engineering internships, graphic design (logos, images, branding), architecture, photography, and accounts and finance.

Daryll, Managing Director of Udrafter, said: “In 2018, The Graduate Market reported that more than a third of recruiters from the Top 100 UK graduate employers stated that those who have no previous work experience are unlikely to be successful during the selection process for their graduate programmes.”

We firmly believe there is a real gap in the market for our expertise. It is the right time for us to deliver.

Daryll Morrow Founder & Managing Director Udrafter Ltd