Udrafter is described as an “on-demand student work experience platform” to help students find work that matches their skills. Local companies can post one-off jobs to be completed by skilled students within hours. Founder Daryll Morrow created the business as part of a student project to help students gain experience in their chosen careers and to save businesses time and money.

Name: Daryll Morrow

Age: 25

Position: Founder

WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?
Udrafter

WHERE IS IT BASED?
Aberdeen

WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?
I HAD to come up with a business idea as part of my master’s degree in international business at Robert Gordon University in 2016. The idea had to focus on problems in society. As students ourselves we all had part time jobs which had inflexible hours and poor pay and were not relevant to what we were studying. We identified problems faced by students. We wanted to provide flexible bite sized work experience opportunities. I wanted future students to not face what I did at uni. I decided to do a masters because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I did social sciences at undergrad but couldn’t get jobs due to lack of experience and the skills gap recognised by the government and businesses around the country. I had a grad job in recruitment as well which made me understand the recruitment industry a lot more.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
THE business puts in the hourly rate, job time and end time and can view the student’s profile. We focus on bite-sized pieces of work as it is more flexible for students. They don’t hire students for contracted work. The business can see review of students from previous jobs, their experience and biography.

Feedback has been very positive. With the economic downturn in Aberdeen we noticed that a lot of business are not looking to hire full time employees. We wanted to target that and students with work experience. The main industries that use it are computer science, mechanical engineering and digital marketing. It is available as both an app and a website so students and businesses get notifications.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?
THERE are a few similar programmes in the UK that do hospitality and retail stuff and others focus on grad job placements. We operate similarly but we’re targeted on capturing students when they’re still studying, not when they have graduated. It is similar to the graduate apprenticeship scheme the government rolled out. We are growing the government target but we can offer a more scalable model.

WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?
IT was initially just one off jobs and doing jobs for free like cleaning, moving boxes and assembling furniture. Then we realised the business could be more lucrative than that and could be a more targeted and socially innovative message to help students with their degree. It is a good learning experience but we started to focus on university and college students. Small businesses don’t have money for recruitment agencies.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?
I GENUINELY enjoy creating something from nothing and being able to shape students’ careers and provide value for a business where it didn’t already exist. It is quite time consuming for a business to go down the university route. I love the autonomy of running my own business and implementing my own ideas. It gives more flexibility.

There’s lots of access to funding in Scotland – Virgin Startup, Scottish Edge, Scottish Enterprise. There was no particular blueprint, we needed to go digging for these things but it’s a really good place to set up a company. Scotland has always been good for business.

Aberdeen and Dundee are growing. It [Scotland] is one of the best places in the world to set up a business – it gets harder when you go south.

WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?
I HOPE it will be international and to be able to help students to connect with businesses all over the world.

I hope paid work experience will no longer be hard for students and that our business will become similar to Deliveroo or Uber – convenience is the popular way now. I want to have an app that allows students a taster of the world of work before graduating. That’s our big focus.