Janus - A Job Application Tracker

Track your job applications at the click of a button!

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Inspiration

Picture yourself, sitting at your desk, applying to jobs on Linkedin, Indeed, Glassdoor, day after day in the hopes that you might land your dream job one day. Soon, you've started to invariably despise the process and you've got applications that you've lost count of. Finding a job is a tough task, more so when you're in the middle of a pandemic that has plagued the world. Tracking those applications is thus, just an additional burden.

That is why we built Janus, a chrome extension that tracks your applications for you, at the click of a button.

We also kept the theme "Springing into action" in mind to build a tool that would boost productivity as well!

What it does

  • It is a chrome extension that tracks information about the job you are applying to, as you are applying to it.
  • The extension works on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor as of now.
  • As you are applying to job and are using the extension, a simple click on "Track Application" will scrape the page for data and store details about the job in a database (namely job title, location, company, link to the job).
  • The app also provides additional functionality of sending you periodic e-mails to follow up on previously applied job application using Courier.
  • It also allows users to view all of the applications on a separate website, which are stored on a CockroachDB database.

How we built it

  • Figma to make a prototype.
  • HTML/CSS, Javascript and Bootstrap to make the frontend of the extension
  • Node.js as framework for backend and scraping, along with modules like cheerio etc.
  • CockroachDB as the database and deployed it on Google Cloud.
  • Courier to send e-mail notifications using SendGrid

Challenges we ran into

  • Npm modules do not work on browsers so we struggled for a while to figure out how to make the script work as an extension. Finally we found out about browserify, a module that helps run node modules in the browser.
  • It was the very first time any of us had made a chrome extension or used Courier so it was challenging to work on this project as a whole.
  • Integrating different components of the website was also a challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Janus is an app that has the potential to help real time users and solves an active problem that we ourselves have faced. It could be a powerful tool, with additional functionalities and enhancement. We are proud to have come up with this idea and implemented most of what we had in mind - a fully functioning extension!

What we learned

  • We learnt how to build a Chrome extension since it was the team's first time doing so! We also learnt how to leverage modules like browserify and cheerio and tools like Courier. Why reinvent the wheel?

What's next for Janus

  • Adding finishing touches and making front-end pixel perfect.
  • We'd like to add user authentication to the extension to personalize it further.
  • We'd like to add functionality to use the LinkedIn API and tracks applications on LinkedIn.
  • Publish it on the chrome store!

Domain.com domain - janus.tech

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