How AI is Transforming Youth Employability in Kent
Youth unemployment in Kent and Medway has stubbornly outpaced the national average for over a decade. The problem is rarely a lack of available jobs. More often, it is a mismatch — young people who do not know which roles suit their skills, employers who struggle to find candidates with the right attitude and aptitude, and an advice ecosystem that moves too slowly to keep pace with a labour market being reshaped by automation.
At Pilot 2 Work CIC, we built EddyAI FLOW to address this mismatch directly.
What makes EddyAI FLOW different
Traditional job boards return results based on keyword matching. Type "retail assistant" and you get a list of retail assistant roles. This works reasonably well for someone who already knows what they want and how to describe it. It works very poorly for a nineteen-year-old who has never held a formal job, does not know which sectors are hiring, and cannot articulate their skills in the vocabulary that job descriptions use.
EddyAI FLOW takes a different starting point. Instead of asking young people to search, it asks them questions — about what they enjoy, what environments they thrive in, what they find difficult, what previous experiences (paid or unpaid) they have had. It then maps those responses against a continuously updated dataset of live vacancies, apprenticeship frameworks, and training pathways across the Kent and Medway area.
The result is a shortlist of genuinely relevant opportunities, with a plain-language explanation of why each one was surfaced — not just a link to apply.
The human layer
One thing we have learned quickly is that AI recommendation alone is not sufficient. Many young people we work with have had poor experiences with automated systems in the past — Universal Credit, school UCAS tools, CV builders that produce generic templates nobody believes. Trust needs to be earned.
Every EddyAI FLOW user is paired with a human coach who reviews the recommendations alongside them, answers questions, and helps with applications. The AI handles the data-intensive work of matching at scale. The coach handles the emotional intelligence, the context that no algorithm can fully capture.
Early results
Since launching EddyAI FLOW, we have supported over 250 young people across Kent and Medway. Of those who completed a full coaching programme, more than 70% moved into employment, an apprenticeship, or accredited training within three months. That figure includes young people who came to us with significant barriers: care leavers, those with unspent convictions, and those who had been out of education, employment, and training for over a year.
The technology matters. But so does the commitment to using it in a way that actually serves the people it is supposed to help.
What's next
We are currently developing enhanced neurodiversity profiling within EddyAI FLOW, so that young people with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and related profiles receive recommendations that account for their working style preferences — not just their skill set. We are also piloting an employer-side dashboard that allows partner businesses to understand the talent pool they are drawing from and tailor their entry-level roles accordingly.
If you are a young person in Kent or Medway looking for career support, or an employer interested in accessing our talent pipeline, get in touch.