aspiring AI

Fast-track your tech internship hunt with 'aspiring AI'! Our AI-powered platform builds standout portfolios in just 15 minutes, helping students shine in a competitive tech industry.

Comment

Inspiration

In our third year of university, we realized that securing a tech internship required more than strong academics - a compelling portfolio was key. However, many students, including us, didn't know how to create one or didn't have the time.

A standout portfolio is not just a display of finished projects. It narrates your journey, displaying the decisions, problem-solving skills, and lessons learned along the way. But with academic commitments, finding time to create this story is often challenging.

Surveys from hover.blog show that 86% of recruiters visit an applicant's portfolio, and for 71%, its quality influences their hiring decision. This highlights the need for an impactful portfolio in the competitive tech industry.

We developed 'aspiring AI' to tackle this issue. Our platform empowers students to create a compelling portfolio that reflects their unique skills and story in just 15 minutes. By reducing the time and stress involved, we make it easier for students to shine in the tech industry.

What It Does

'aspiring AI' is reshaping the tech internship landscape with our innovative AI-Powered Portfolio Builder. This tool takes over the writing process, freeing students to concentrate on honing their projects and developing their skills. But it's not just about automation - our AI is a guiding companion, helping students create standout portfolios in a competitive tech industry.

The second key feature of 'aspiring AI' allows users to convert their profiles into portfolio pages. These can be shared effortlessly, showcasing their skill set and project accomplishments in a polished, professional format. Our platform streamlines the portfolio creation process, allowing students to create a compelling portfolio in as little as 15 minutes. With 'aspiring AI', students are well-prepared to secure their dream tech internships.

Why Now

The tech job landscape is changing fast. Sadly, more than 213,000 tech workers lost their jobs globally in 2023, as of July. However, the need for tech skills has not gone down. In fact, companies are now paying more attention to skills, rather than degrees. This means tech job seekers need to work on their soft skills to stand out.

Also, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tech jobs are still growing. They expect an average growth of 5% between 2021 and 2023. Now is the perfect time for a platform like 'aspiring AI'. It helps tech job seekers build strong portfolios quickly, while also improving their skills.

How We Built It

In the creation of 'aspiring AI', we harnessed a variety of powerful technologies to craft our innovative solution. Using Next.js for our front end allowed us to leverage its speed, simplicity, and scalability, essential characteristics for our user-focused platform.

For our backend and database, we chose Firebase due to its comprehensive suite of tools, including real-time databases, user management, and cloud storage, which greatly simplified our development process. Firebase also provided us with robust security measures and automatic, scalable hosting.

For the heart of our system, the AI that guides users through portfolio creation, we used Cohere's large language models (LLMs). These AI models are known for their ability to understand and generate human-like text, providing us with the capability to offer users an intuitive, interactive, and efficient portfolio-building experience.

The assembly of 'aspiring AI' was a joint endeavor. Our UX designers meticulously constructed an intuitive interface, enabling smooth interaction between users and our AI assistant. In parallel, our engineers turned these designs into a robust, working platform.

We built 'aspiring AI' on teamwork and practical tech choices that emphasize speed, scalability, and a beautiful user interface. This platform is a testament to the collaboration and grit of our team, leveraging the best technologies under time constraints.

Challenges We Ran Into

Building 'aspiring AI' presented us with several challenges:

  • Finding specific uses for our AI was tough due to its extensive capabilities.
  • Determining the best prompts for each use case was a continual learning process.
  • Maintaining our energy to complete the project within the 36-hour hackathon was challenging.
  • Watching other teams work on their projects sometimes caused us to second-guess our progress.

Despite these hurdles, we remained focused and learned immensely from the experience.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

Here are the accomplishments that we're incredibly proud of during our 'aspiring AI' journey:

  • We've successfully integrated AI as the core feature of our product. Building a tool that truly assists students in creating their tech portfolios was challenging yet exciting.
  • We've successfully delved into the field of prompt engineering. Determining the best prompts for each use case was a demanding task, but the outcome was well worth it. This achievement not only refined the user experience but also enhanced the overall effectiveness of our platform.

These accomplishments have sparked a greater curiosity within us about technology and innovation, reminding us of the value and impact of continuous learning and improvement.

What We Learned

  • Our first takeaway was successfully integrating Cohere AI into 'aspiring AI', a process that brought us invaluable insights about working with advanced AI systems and fine-tuning them for our specific use case.
  • Our experience also taught us how to build a cutting-edge product in a constrained timeline, while maintaining a keen focus on functionality and user experience. This involved effective team coordination, quick decision-making, and prioritizing features that add the most value to our users.

Through this hackathon, we've not only built a product, but also expanded our skills and understanding of AI applications, product development, and user-centric design.

What's Next For aspiring AI

Currently, 'aspiring AI' is primarily optimized for creating Software Engineering portfolios. However, we see a bigger future ahead. Our next step is to enhance our AI capabilities to support portfolios across various tech fields, including Data Science, User Experience Design, and Project Management. We envision 'aspiring AI' as a universal tool that caters to the needs of all tech professionals, helping them quickly and effectively showcase their unique skill sets and experiences.

Built With

  • cohereai
  • daisyui
  • firebase
  • firebasecloudstorage
  • firestore
  • next.js
  • tailwindcss
  • vercel
  • vercelaisdk
  • zustand
Share this project:

Updates