Inspiration
The idea for the Career Fair Management System (CMS) came from our own experience during our first hackathon. While the event itself was exciting and inspiring, we quickly noticed several logistical problems that made the experience less smooth than it could have been. One of the biggest issues was the long check-in line at the entrance, where organizers had to manually record each student’s information. Watching people wait in line made us realize that much of the process could be automated. That moment inspired us to build a system that could make career fairs more efficient, seamless, and organized for everyone involved.
What it does
CMS is a platform designed to simplify the entire career fair experience for three groups of users: organizers, students, and companies. Each group has its own interface and features tailored to their needs. Organizers can manage events and send invitations to companies, students can register and plan their booth visits, and companies can review student profiles in real time. The system also provides useful analytics, such as how many students are interested in each booth and how busy the event currently is. Overall, CMS focuses on reducing wasted time and improving the experience for all participants.
How we built it
We built the system using MongoDB as our primary database to store login credentials, student profiles, resumes, and event data in the cloud. Resumes are stored so that companies can both view and download them directly from the platform. We also integrated the Google AI Studio API to automatically retrieve upcoming career fair events from the University of Colorado Boulder career services page using the page link as context. The application begins with three separate login paths—Organizer, Company, and Student—each leading to a dashboard with different capabilities and permissions.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges was designing a system that supports three completely different user roles while still keeping everything connected through the same database. Ensuring that students, companies, and organizers could interact with the same data without conflicts required careful planning. Another challenge was implementing the resume storage system so that resumes could be securely uploaded, stored in the cloud, and downloaded by companies when needed. Integrating the external event information through the AI API also required experimenting with how to extract useful data from the event page.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
One accomplishment we are particularly proud of is creating a working concept that addresses a real problem we personally experienced. We successfully designed a system that reduces long check-in lines by using event codes for automatic check-ins. Another feature we are proud of is the booth interaction system, where students enter a booth code and companies can instantly view their profile and resume. Seeing all these components work together in a single platform during our first hackathon project was a rewarding achievement.
What we learned
hrough this project, we learned a great deal about team collaboration, system design, and real-world problem solving. It was our first time building a project in a hackathon setting, so we had to quickly divide responsibilities and focus on implementing the most important features. We also learned how to integrate APIs, manage cloud databases, and design systems that support multiple types of users. Most importantly, we learned how to take a real-world problem and turn it into a practical technical solution.
What's next for Career Fair managment system
In the future, we would like to expand CMS by improving the analytics and user experience. For example, we could add better scheduling tools, smarter booth recommendations for students, and more detailed analytics for companies and organizers. Another goal is to improve the real-time crowd monitoring system so students can better plan when to visit certain booths. With further development, CMS could evolve from a hackathon prototype into a fully functional platform that universities and organizations could use to manage career fairs more effectively.
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