Inspiration
Job applications are burdensome. With the long application timeframes, and the vast volume of submissions, it is easy to lose track of what you’ve applied for. Yet, organisation and tracking are the first steps towards success, giving individuals a stronger sense of control to maximise their job securing potential.
With many peers actively sourcing for summer internships right now, we decided to create this chrome extension to facilitate the job searching experience not only for students, but for every job-sourcing individual around.
It’s personal. Job applications made simple.
Through rezoomé, we hope to eliminate the stress in managing job sourcing processes, allowing users to focus on their next moves while optimising their applications. We seek to personalise users’ job hunting experiences, building a strong foundation for their entire application sprint.
By allowing users to conveniently track every detail about their job opportunities regardless of where they found them, we aim to make job applications more seamless, customised and fun. Rezoomé’s cutting edge technology also helps users create compelling resumes that make an impact on recruiters. Installation is easy and free.
With rezoomé, it’s simple.
Why a Chrome Extension
We decided to utilise a chrome extension to maximise convenience and minimise platform redirection, ensuring users remained focused on their job applications to make the rezoomé experience a seamless one.
Users can simply click on the extension while exploring a job opening. While our platform is currently limited to LinkedIn job postings, we seek to eventually expand our capabilities to cover all job portals.
Selecting the “Find Connection” link will also open up a search for job recruiters of the company in a new window to minimise disruptions to users’ job sourcing progress. Users can also reach out to these suggested connections to form meaningful relationships to enhance their applications to these companies, potentially increasing their chances of acceptance.
How We Built It
The front-end interface, done using HTML/CSS/JavaScript allows the user to copy-paste their resume into text, and this will be used to compare against keywords based on the category of the job application. The extension then scrapes data from the LinkedIn job posting it was clicked on from, for job title and the job description to match it to a category in the keywords dataset.
Natural Language Processing was done on a resume dataset using Python to come up with weights for common keywords. The text was cleaned and stop words were removed, before coming up with a list of keywords. For each category, the top 40 most common words are chosen and weighted according to the number of instances.
The backend was made using Node Express.js, which takes in the user’s saved resume and “grades” it against the job application data. Resume text data is graded out of 100 against the keywords using a robust keyword matching algorithm, based on the weights of matched keywords. The server then returns the score out of 100, the matched keywords, as well as several keyword suggestions to help enhance their resume. This data will be displayed as a report in the extension window. From there, users will be able to save these job applications, as well as click on a button to add the position to their list, saving it for future reference.
Challenges Faced
Idea generation was definitely a real challenge for our team. The 24 hour time constraint did not help the situation either. However, our team decided to focus on making the best out of this experience and taking the opportunity to learn something new.
After deciding on our idea, the journey wasn’t a completely smooth ride either. With none of us having any prior experience in coding a chrome extension, completing this project and making a functional, working prototype was a major feat. Most of our 24 hours was dedicated to learning new frameworks and exploring platforms and features some of us had never seen before.
Integrating the front and back end systems was no easy task as well, especially given the many careless mistakes that we constantly made :’) However, we had fun, and that is what truly matters.
‘It’s not about the destination but the journey - and the company you travel with.’
While this challenge was tough, it was definitely a rewarding one, and we are immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of this journey.
Accomplishments We're Proud Of
Creating a Google Chrome extension from scratch, with no prior experience whatsoever is no small feat and something that we are very proud of. Being spontaneous and overcoming challenges faced in our path without dampening our spirits is something that will stick with us for time to come.
What We Learned
The most obvious thing we have learned, would be how to create a functional chrome extension.
However, beyond that, sourcing for UI/UX mock-up inspiration was definitely a very interesting experience. Being used to mainly creating websites and mobile applications, designing a chrome extension was a unique and intriguing experience.
Developing a logical and strategic business plan for our product was extremely insightful as well. Having to formulate monetisation plans and accurately identifying market gaps and opportunities opened our eyes to the immense amount of thought and consideration behind the growth and development of every successful company existing in the market.
The startup scene in Singapore has been steadily growing over the years, with many entrepreneurs popping up around the country. Our market and industry analysis provided us with a glimpse into this scene, and we now realise how interesting an area this will be to explore in the future. The passion and desire to make a difference is truly palpable, and we hope that our ideas and solutions will spark a change in future too.
Try out our extension by clicking on our GitHub below and following the instructions there!
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