NetworkMate

Creating Connections that Count

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Inspiration

As students actively navigating the job hunt, we noticed a common hurdle: reaching out to professionals in our dream roles or companies felt awkward, tedious, and inefficient. We wanted a way to streamline the networking process, reduce friction, and make cold outreach feel effortless — especially for those who may not already have strong connections. That’s what inspired NetworkMate — a tool that empowers users to network smarter, not harder.

What it does

NetworkMate is a one-stop networking assistant that:

  • Lets users input a company, role, and university.
  • Automatically finds professionals in those roles.
  • Retrieves professional emails using smart scraping.
  • Displays a clean list of contacts with a pre-filled email draft.
  • Enables one-click outreach using the user’s own email client.
  • Supports resume uploads, Google sign-in, and personalized profiles.

How we built it

  • Frontend: Built using React and styled with Bootstrap for a modern, responsive experience.
  • Backend: Flask server to handle API routing, integrating Selenium for dynamic scraping of professional profiles and email generation.
  • Database & Auth: Firebase Firestore for storing user profiles and Firebase Auth for Google login.
  • Email: Utilized mailto: links with BCC to trigger user email clients for personalized outreach.

Challenges we ran into

  • CORS issues during API testing between frontend and Flask backend.
  • Handling browser pop-up blockers when triggering multiple email tabs.
  • Extracting emails from public profiles reliably and ethically.
  • Managing asynchronous data flow between profile scraping and email retrieval.
  • Ensuring a clean user experience across different devices and email clients.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Building a full-stack app with profile scraping, email extraction, and real-time user interaction — all in under 24 hours.
  • Seamless integration between frontend, backend, and database.
  • Creating a tool that feels like magic — typing in a few fields and getting outreach-ready emails instantly.
  • Designing an intuitive UI that lowers the barrier for meaningful professional connections.

What we learned

  • How to use Flask with Selenium and React together in a full-stack workflow.
  • The importance of planning for CORS and cross-origin communication early.
  • Managing form state, modals, and controlled components in React.
  • Leveraging Firebase Auth and Firestore for fast, scalable user data handling.

What's next for NetworkMate

  • 🧠 Integrating GPT-based personalized email draft suggestions.
  • ✉️ Connecting with an email API (like EmailJS or SendGrid) for direct sending.
  • 🧩 Adding LinkedIn authentication and scraping for more robust networking data.
  • 📈 Providing analytics on sent emails (opens, responses).
  • 📱 Creating a mobile-friendly version with push notifications.

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