Career Compass

Let Career Compass guide your skills and unlock your path to success!

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Inspiration

As someone who always wants to learn I found myself always searching up for Data Science Roadmaps and new skills to learn and while doing that I realized that I am probably not the only one doing so. In today's fast-paced world, navigating career paths can feel overwhelming, especially in the ever-evolving field of technology. I was inspired by the challenges faced by students, professionals, and career changers who often struggle to identify roles that align with their unique skills and aspirations just like how I did. Combining the power of machine learning and the need for personalized guidance, Career Compass was born—a tool designed to simplify the journey, offering tailored career recommendations and actionable roadmaps to success.

What it does

Career Compass leverages powerful datasets from Melissa Data and the US Department of Labor, combined with cutting-edge Machine Learning algorithms, to determine the ideal career path for you based on your skills, location, and optionally your resume. Missing data is supplemented using the Groq API, ensuring a complete and accurate recommendation (Machine Learning model with 84.2% accuracy). Beyond just suggesting jobs, Career Compass provides a personalized roadmap to success, outlining the skills you need to learn, relevant courses, and additional resources to guide your journey. To keep you motivated, the platform gamifies your progress with quests, XP, and badges, turning career growth into an engaging and rewarding experience.

How I built it

I developed Career Compass using a React frontend, since that was the framework I was most comfortable with, paired with a Python backend powered by the FastAPI framework. The backend relies on SQLite3 as the database to store and manage user profiles, job data, and skill roadmaps. For data analysis and model creation, I utilized libraries like Pandas, NumPy, and Scikit-learn to process datasets and build a Naive Bayes Classifier model. Additionally, I created a custom script to parse user resumes, extracting key information and skills to tailor the recommendations further. Together, these technologies form a robust and efficient platform for guiding users on their career journeys and can jumpstart your career.

Challenges I ran into

  • Soloing a Project: Tackling every aspect of this project alone was a major challenge, from ideation and coding to deployment and testing
  • Dataset Analysis: Combining and analyzing five different datasets with varying formats and parameters to create an accurate Machine Learning model was particularly difficult
  • Resume Parsing: Extracting skills and relevant information from PDF resumes proved to be one of the most time-consuming and technically challenging tasks of my entire Data Science career (I feel bad for recruiters now)
  • Frontend Design: Organizing and displaying all the generated information on the frontend required careful planning to ensure clarity and usability
  • Deployment : Deploying the application was especially tough since it was my first experience with web deployment, requiring me to learn and troubleshoot along the way

Accomplishments and Values Learned

It would be an understatement to say that I learned SO SO SO MUCH during this hackathon from frontend developing to building an accurate machine learning model from multiple datasets. While I would not recommend soloing a project, you can gain so much experience from learning by yourself and working out the problems as you go. But this was my third hackathon and I feel extremely accomplished that I was able to pull this entire project off (with the help of so many awesome people and mentors as well as their encouragement). And this was the very first time I got to develop a project from ideation to production and for it to turn out so well makes me feel very very good.

What's next for Career Compass

  • Adding different networking events and socials for users to expand their network in their chosen career
  • Creating new quests and a badge system as well as a leaderboard
  • More links to resources and a blogging section for users to talk
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