Inspiration
The traditional model for job discovery on the web has always been driven by supply: selective companies advertise their open positions on massive job boards for individuals to find. But what if we could search for jobs the way it's done in real life: leveraging the knowledge of your peers to find employment opportunities that genuinely excite you? At Papyrus, we were inspired by EasyBib, the online crowd-generated citation machine, to create an internship application and discovery platform where jobs are shared online because they are interesting, not just sponsored listings, and where students can find career paths that are meaningful, not just lucrative or popular. Papyrus: read your crowd, find your job.
What it does
Papyrus is simple: as an application management tool, it logs the companies you've applied to, and reminds you of deadlines and requirements from the moment you add your interest to your final offer. The magic is in the metadata: each time you create an internship, that internship information is also shared with your peers. Every time you add an internship to your list, your interest changes the stats, showing popularity and longevity statistics of the position. By approaching internships from students' demand side, all the students can share in their collective research on positions.
How we built it
We built the server in NodeJS, using Mongoose and MLab for our database work, Express for routing, and basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript on the front.
Challenges we ran into
We initially wanted to implement the Views in React, but had difficulties installing and compiling. Our database schemas were also particularly hairy, but we cleaned up our system with some great pointers from the mentors.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We actually read the Mongoose documentation! Who knew it could be so instructive! We also are just relieved that we no longer have to use Excel sheets to monitor our job processes.
What we learned
Read the docs; write clean pseudocode before writing unclear regular code; other people have done everything before; sleep is healthy.
What's next for Papyrus
With more time, we need to rebase our frontend in React, add more tools and tracking, and grow our user base!
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