ProfeSearch

Inspiration 启发

1. General background: a common social phenomenon that is happening is known as "内卷", or involution, which literally means "inside rolling". In the field of education, this term specifically refers to students incessantly competing with each other. While people don't all have equal access to opportunities, those with better resources are more likely to be able to climb the social ladder and become more distinguished.
2. Current event & Our Personal Story: COVID & College students' anxiety of finding suitable opportunities on campus to become more competent Due to COVID, the efficiency of our daily communications has been compromised to some extent. As college students who have planned to study abroad, we haven't been able to know our campus and professors in-person. The unfamiliarity with university faculties has caused us to feel anxious when finding resources, especially research and internship opportunities on campus. Currently, the solely official way to communicate these opportunities is through emails. However, it is very inefficient:
3. Overwhelming emails: Students' inboxes are bombarded with recruitment emails. Not only it's difficult for students to process all those emails, but also, it lowers recruiters' possibility of finding suitable students.
4. Sent to wrong audience: For instance, only graduates are desired for the position, yet the emails are sent to undergraduates' inboxes as well.
5. Application with low efficiency: Even though we finally find a suitable position, the communication efficiency is extremely low. We have to send our resumes manually and communicate other necessary information through emails back and forth, not to mention there's COVID and time difference in presence. In general, if these opportunities are still communicated through emails, not only it's difficult for both individual students and faculties to find suitable targets, but also, the resources will not be used in the most proficient way, aggrevating "内卷" or the involution. Therefore, we came up with ProfeSearch, a platform that aims to help students and faculties to share various resources, including research, internship, and other working opportunities on campus. With ProfeSearch, we want to help universities to optimize their utilization of educational resources and connections among students and faculties.

What is does 用途

1. When first entering, users will see a clear homepage with introductions of our platform and clear instructions.
2. All users can select their identities (student / faculty) and institutions and fill out other necessary information to sign up and login.
3. Notification emails will be sent after the sign up process.
4. Faculties: a. Post new positions on campus through the platform, including job title, type (research/internship/others), academic areas, deadline, target audience, etc. b. Organize, search, and filter positions by job title, position type, location (in person/remote), status (unfulfilled/fulfilled/closed), and target audience c. Check detailed information of one particular position and process students' applications (e.g. view students' resume and accept or reject applications)
5. Students: a. Positions are recommended based on students' personal information, such as major and grade b. Filter positions based on job title, type, academic area, location, and deadline c. Check detailed information of one particular position and apply to the position d. Manage personal applications based on various searching conditions and view through all past applications with their current status (success/pending/rejected) e. After corresponding faculty accept the student, the student will receive one email (instead of traditionally overwhelming amount of emails)
6. Users can not only gain efficient communications with their targeting audiences, but this is also a pleasant and smooth experience due to the delicate design of our platform

How we built it 整体实现思路

1. Breaked the platform down into two parts: separate UI for students and faculties
2. Identified basic needs: a. Homepage, Sign up, login, set personal profile information (e.g. institution, field/major, resume...) b. Faculty: post new position, manage positions based on various standards, such as status c. Student: recommend / filter position, manage applications, apply to different positions...
3. Designed UI on framer
4. Designed data models and applied MongoDB
5. Used HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Webpack, Axios, and Vue.js framework to develop frontend
6. Used Express, Node.js, Mongoose, MongoDb to develop backend
7. Auto-generate personal profile with provided LinkedIn Account using Puppeteer
8. Auto-email system after user sign up using SendGrid API
9. Guarantee user data security using Json Web Token sent over http requests only

Challenges we ran into 竞赛途中遇到的问题

1. Time Issue Since we only have 36 hours to set up our platform, how to assign our time is the most urgent challenge. Moreover, since we can only cooperate virtually, we need strategies to make sure we can communicate efficiently. First, we divide our tasks so that each of us handle different tasks: two of us handled the frontend, and the other two handled the backend. By using shared timetable on Notion, we are able to keep track of our progresses. We continuously use zoom and Tencent meetings for screen share to discuss our progress, and also use Wechat voice meetings to communicate efficiently. With our proper time management and task assignment, we are able to finish our project in such urgent time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of 我们项目最骄傲的部分

1. Uniform, clear, and pleasant web page design
2. Originality: no similar platforms can be found currently
3. Position recommendations based on students' personal information, such as grade and major
4. Automatic email notifications after users signing up on our platform
5. User data is secured and no sensitive data is stored in database
6. Clear interactions between faculties and students to improve efficiency

What we learned 我们学到了

Regarding developing a project in such a short amount of time, we definitely learn the importance of teamwork, time management, and divide and conquer. By following the procedure of developing a formal project, from designing UI to writing interface documents to developing frontend and backend, we logically distribute tasks to different teammates with suitable skills and integrate different parts together as a wholesome, practical project. Regarding innovation and pitching ideas, we learned the importance of gaining inspiration from daily news and personal experiences. The idea doesn't have to be extremely fancy, but as long as we start from identifying potential, unsatisfied needs from our daily lives, we can always come up with very practical projects and use our skills to make the society a better place to live in.

What's next... 接下来项目还能

1. If students are willing to provide their Linkedin account, we can automatically help students to fill part of the profile. We also promise that we will not use or divulge any of their privacy.
2. Allow login with universities' SSO Authentication platform: so that we can ensure the security of our users, target each university better, and ensure better management of the positions under different institutions
3. apply ML algorithms to automatically recommend positions for students based on their skills
4. increase possible information that students can upload to provide more precise suggestions for students
5. provide more functions for users: such as relative courses for certain skills, or recommending skills based on the big data of the positions available

Frontend: https://github.com/2021Unihack-ProfeSearch/ProfeSearch (npm install --> npm run dev) Backend: https://github.com/2021Unihack-ProfeSearch/Backend (npm install --> npm start)

Built With

• axios
• css
• express.js
• html
• javascript
• mongodb
• mongoose
• node.js
• pug
• pupeteer
• vue.js
• webpack