LaunchPad

Inspiration

Many job seekers struggle to create resumes that truly resonate with employers. Studies show that over half of applicants don’t tailor their resumes to specific positions, and most include irrelevant buzzwords or lack measurable results. These issues make it harder for recruiters and AI-driven systems to identify strong candidates.

At the same time, artificial intelligence has transformed how employers evaluate applicants, introducing automated screening tools that have reshaped the recruiting process. As students navigating this competitive landscape, we noticed how much time is wasted manually customizing and formatting resumes for each opportunity.

To solve this, we built Launchpad! LaunchPad is an AI-powered platform that ensures professionalism and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) compatibility by instantly generating tailored, LaTeX-formatted resumes for any job on the market. It’s a faster, smarter way to help candidates present their best selves in a job market that’s dynamic as ever.

What it does

Launchpad is a full-stack platform that eliminates the need for manual resume maintenance.

Intuitive UI: Offers a clean, user-friendly interface for managing all resume components including work experiences, projects, and education. It features a dynamic live resume builder that updates instantly as the user types.

Job Description Parsing: Automatically extracts key skills, keywords, and role-specific requirements from job postings to help users optimize their resumes for visibility and alignment. This ensures each resume highlights the most relevant qualifications and increases the likelihood of passing AI-driven applicant screening systems.

Automatic Relevance Sorting: Analyzes a provided job description URL and intelligently selects the most relevant experiences and projects for that specific application.

AI-Powered Feedback: Provides instant, AI-generated suggestions to improve bullet points and enhance resume quality.

LaTeX Integration: Enables users to edit, compile, and preview LaTeX resumes directly within the platform, ensuring professional formatting and ATS compatibility.

How we built it

Frontend: Built with Vue.js to create a dynamic, responsive, and intuitive user interface. Thevfrontend handles real-time updates in the live resume builder, ensuring a seamless editing experience.

Backend: Powered by Python FastAPI, which serves as a lightweight and efficient API for data management, job description analysis, and LaTeX processing. It handles user input, integrates with AI models for feedback generation, and compiles LaTeX documents into professional PDFs.

Challenges we ran into

Backend Pivot: We initially attempted to build the backend in Go to explore a new language, but halfway through the hackathon, we pivoted to Python FastAPI to better manage complexity and ensure timely delivery of core features.

Frontend Learning Curve: Developing the frontend with Vue.js was a first for our team, which required rapid learning and adaptation to implement a responsive and polished user experience under tight time constraints.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully built a fully functional tool that addresses a real pain point. We’re genuinely excited to use the tool ourselves and to help others develop professionally in their search for internships and full-time jobs. Launchpad streamlines resume creation and optimization in a way that’s both efficient and intuitive, offering capabilities not commonly found in existing tools on the market.

What we learned

We gained valuable experience working with new technologies and designing scalable system architectures!

Tech Stack: Developed hands-on experience with Vue.js, deepening our understanding of component-driven frontend development, and explored the capabilities and limitations of Go before transitioning to Python FastAPI.

API Design: Learned how to design and implement a robust, polymorphic API contract capable of managing complex, structured resume data efficiently and consistently across the system.

What's next for Launchpad

Our vision for Launchpad is to evolve it into a fully production-ready tool with enhanced intelligence, scalability, and user experience:

Better AI/ML Feedback: Integrate more advanced AI models to provide detailed resume improvement suggestions and introduce a conversational chat interface to help users craft stronger, results-driven descriptions.

Deployment & Infrastructure: Deploy the platform to the cloud with a persistent database, implement OAuth for secure user authentication, and enable personal data storage for a seamless, personalized experience.