ToolKit Landing Page
Questions!

Toolbox

https://app.supademo.com/demo/cmdb1elbu03zavi0injcq9h3z?preview=true

Inspiration

Students are stressed about their job prospects and interviews are the decisive moment where employers choose between equally qualified candidates.

There are a lot of interview prep platforms available, they are complex, over crowded or stuck behind a paywall.

We want to democratize career opportunities for everyone and level the playing field for students to succeed in interviews.

By building a toolbox of their skills, experiences and knowledge, anyone who is driven and motivated can refine interviewing skills and more importantly build confidence.

How we built it

Frontend/Backend

React
JavaScript
HTML, and CSS with Tailwind for UI
Node.js
Express.js for server-side logic and API endpoints

Database

MongoDB Atlas

AI Integration

Gemini's API

Authentication

Auth0

Architecture

MERN + Node.js libraries

Challenges/Learning

Our primary technical challenge involved creating seamless integration across three layers: frontend user interactions, backend data management, and AI API communication. Significant debugging time was spent to ensure user inputs were properly captured, securely stored in the database, and accurately processed by the Google Gemini model for generating the personalized content.

Our team ran into the usual Git struggles that come with collaborative coding. We dealt with merge conflicts, accidentally overwrote each other's code, and lost some changes along the way, which slowed us down and meant spending extra time getting everything back on track.

But… overcoming these obstacles strengthened problem-solving skills and deepened understanding of full-stack development. In the 36 hours, we tackled Git workflows, got creative with testing and prioritizing work when features were blocked and ultimately became better developers.

Learning

Building this project from initial concept to working prototype was incredibly rewarding, especially knowing its potential to be a tool loved by students.

The experience taught us resilience, when we lost hours of work just before the deadline, we adapted, persisted and pushed.

What's next for Toolbox?

Toolbox would like to escape the confines of localhost 8080.

We hope to ship the platform into the hands of users, collect feedback, iterate and polish because we truly believe that this simple idea can change students' attitudes towards the job search.

It would also be interesting to explore other types of users like how Toolbox can help working professionals, founders and anyone build a toolbox of ideas.

built with ❤️ from the 6