Lancaster's JobFair wins Innovate UK grant to debias hiring

What's the deal? Lancaster-based Digital Heard Ltd has secured a grant from Innovate UK's TechLocal programme to expand JobFairDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a platform that analyses job adverts for exclusionary and gendered language. The project, JobFair NW, runs until March 2027.

What's the endgame? JobFair reads an advert before it's posted, flags wording that quietly deters applicants, and suggests alternatives. The grant funds a scheme letting tech SMEs across the North West take a three-month trial of the tool.

The project is led by Digital Heard, the company of founder Dr Alice Ashcroft, in partnership with social enterprise Cybermoor Services Ltd and AI specialist Sqwosh.

Why now? The funding arrives amid wider concern that AI could make hiring less fair. JobFair, built with Sqwosh director Josh Bailey as an agentic AI system with human review, pitches the opposite use.

"JobFair uses AI to catch the bias that's already sitting in a job advert, the stuff people write without noticing, and it gets better at that the more it sees," Bailey said. "The aim was never to take the person out of hiring."

Ashcroft launched JobFair two years ago, then went on maternity leave months later. "If the product only worked while I was in the room pushing it, it wasn't much of a product," she said. "It kept going, people kept using it, and now we've got the backing to put it in front of businesses." Her PhD at Lancaster University examined gendered language and technology; her book on the subject, Unspoken , is published by Hachette in February 2027.

The signal: The grant reflects a regional push to build tech capacity through collaboration rather than single firms going it alone. "No single organisation builds a regional tech ecosystem on its own," said Daniel Heery of Cybermoor. "Fairer hiring helps every business in the North West."

Read more: beyond.radio

Image credit: Generated with Gemini