Meeting the needs of young people has come to match up closely with servicing the needs of industry at not-for-profit youth-orientated careers platform plotr.

The community interest company provides a space for young jobseekers and students to explore the world of work, while employers can promote and give information about their industry and opportunities.

Chief executive officer Andrew Thompson tells Recruiter that plotr originated as a business initiative, but focused on the needs of youth: “Right at the beginning one of the things we did very thoroughly was talking to young people about what they wanted. We listened very carefully.

“What struck me over the year was what started off as meeting the needs of youngsters as a one-stop shop, actually now we’re meeting the needs of industry as a one-stop shop,” Thompson adds.

The organisation obtained seed funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in March last year, and has since got to break-even point, Thompson says, thanks to industry funding. The platform went live on 19 November.

Thompson describes that a beta testing phase with schools last summer, “changed our views in terms of how much contact we’d need... we dramatically increased the amount of content before switching it on”. The initial plan had been to have 10 career ‘worlds’ on the site, and roughly 60 roles profiled – they now have 20 and 200 respectively.

Thompson’s tenure as CEO has seen him work for plotr on secondment from outsourcing and services firm Serco. He leaves the post this week and is replaced by Jim Carrick-Birtwell, who will be paid by plotr itself. Carrick-Birtwell is the founder and CEO of an HR jobs site.