Backend

AI generated career insights for underserved people in tech

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Inspiration

We understand that inspiration for any good idea stems from a problem that needs to be solved. The problem that we are addressing with our app is the lack of proportional diversity within the tech industry, with certain ethnic groups and genders being significantly underrepresented in tech roles compared to their share in the general workforce. As an example, African Americans make up just 7% of employees in tech compared to 14% of the general workforce. The gap is even wider at executive levels with an even lower percentage of African Americans holding leadership positions in tech companies. African Americans are not the only underserved group in tech, but as part of the 7% that make up the industry, we wanted to make something that would help other people like us and countless others.

Different ethnicities and genders are underrepresented in tech for many different reasons, but a major contributor for most underserved groups is the lack of guidance and mentorship. Limited awareness about the wide range of opportunities in the tech sector has always been prevalent in these groups. A lot of people feel like they can’t get started in tech or further their career because they don’t have enough information about what is out there, or they don’t know where to get started. Our app aims to help contribute to solving the issue of limited awareness by sending personalized insights about jobs within the industry, which can open doors people never knew existed. There are countless future implementations to our idea, and we are hoping that we can use this tool to educate people and help them get started in a tech career that they want to pursue.

What it does

Our app provides career guidance to underserved people in the skills based workforce, particularly in tech. Each day the app user will receive three personalized AI generated flashcards containing insights about how to navigate the tech industry based on who they are, what career they're looking for more information about, and what their personal interests are. There will be one flashcard per day in each of the following categories: career path development, job interview tips, general information about day to day roles and responsibilities, and inspirational quotes related to the user's career journey. Each card will be either a statement, quote, or thought provoking question on the front side with more information or an answer to the question on the backside. Upon signup the user will answer a specific set of questions that will help the large language model decide what to put in the cards each day. They will be asked different things such as what career they are interested in, how many years of experience they have, and what their personal interests are. All things will be taken into consideration including their age, gender, ethnic background and sexual orientation. The flashcards are generated based on what they are interested in learning about. For example if the user is looking for info about progressing in software development roles, the app may generate something about effective strategies for transitioning from a software development role to a product manager position, and how can your background in software engineering benefit you in this new role. There are countless tips and insights that can be created. The user has the option to scroll from card to card, and switch from light to dark mode. Once the day passes, there will be a different set of cards for the user to read the next day.

How we built it

Backend was built primarily with Typescript. The mobile app is built with React Native and the API is built using express js. The API leverages the Langchain framework to interact with the GPT-40 model in OpenAI, and also uses a MongoDB Atlas database to store and retrieve data. The API is served using a Firebase function. The mobile app also interacts with Firebase to authenticate users with their Google accounts. The mobile was initialized using expo, then enabled to run native code with expo prebuild. Using this Expo setup allowed us to build a preview Android application using EAS.

Challenges we ran into

A major challenge we ran into was deploying the app. The initial idea was to have both the mobile app and the API code in an NX monorepo and set up an efficient CI/CD process. This caused some challenges when building and deploying the apps to Firebase and EAS. It was definitely a learning experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud to be able to submit our project within the limited amount of time we gave ourselves to work on it. We are aware that there are many improvements that can be made, and we plan on making the app better.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the ways that AI can help people from communities similar, and different to ours. Brainstorming our ideas and talking to people in our community caused us to do more research into topics that we weren’t very familiar with. This helped us learn more about the common struggles people from different communities face, and how personalized insights and motivation can go a long way.

What's next for Backend

As mentioned before, there are countless future implementations for Backend. We could potentially turn it into a tool that supports not just people in tech but anyone looking for career guidance. Some of the features we are planning include expanding the flashcard categories to cover things such as soft skills like communication and teamwork, networking tips, and leadership training. These additions will help users develop both their professional and personal skills, giving them well-rounded support. For example, networking tips will help users build connections in their field, while the leadership training flashcards will help those looking to take the next step into management or team leadership roles. By continually adding new features, Backend will grow into a more complete career tool for underserved communities, offering personalized guidance to help users at every stage of their journey. Our goal is to provide people in underserved communities with a great tool to help them succeed and thrive in their careers.

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