Inspiration
The skilled trades face a growing workforce crisis while millions of students and job seekers struggle to find meaningful career pathways. Traditional career guidance is fragmented, slow, and often disconnected from real labor market demand.
We built PACTI (Pathway Apprenticeship Community Technology Initiative) to bridge that gap using AI. Our vision is to give every person a personalized pathway into high-demand careers while helping employers identify workforce-ready talent based on skills, readiness, and potential—not just resumes.
What it does
PACTI is an AI-powered workforce intelligence platform that guides users from self-discovery to employment.
The platform combines AI assessments, career matching, digital resumes, labor market intelligence, and apprenticeship discovery into a single experience. Candidates receive personalized recommendations, while employers gain a structured view of workforce readiness and can identify talent aligned with their hiring needs.
How we built it
PACTI is built using OpenAI models with a modern TypeScript application architecture. We integrated workforce intelligence from trusted public data sources including O*NET, CareerOneStop, BLS, and Apprenticeship.gov to provide real-time career, wage, certification, and training information.
OpenAI powers the conversational guidance, reasoning, personalized recommendations, and AI-assisted career exploration throughout the platform.
Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was integrating multiple workforce data sources into a consistent experience while maintaining data quality and trust. We also focused heavily on making AI recommendations explainable so users understand why careers are recommended instead of receiving black-box results.
Accomplishments we're proud of
- Built a live AI workforce intelligence platform.
- Connected career assessments with real workforce opportunities.
- Created personalized career pathways for students and job seekers.
- Enabled employers to discover apprenticeship-ready candidates.
- Demonstrated how AI can strengthen workforce development instead of replacing human decision-making.
What we learned
Building AI for workforce development requires balancing powerful reasoning with trustworthy public labor-market data. The most valuable AI systems don't simply answer questions—they help people make better life decisions.
What's next for PACTI
Our next step is expanding PACTI into a national workforce intelligence platform serving schools, workforce boards, employers, apprenticeship sponsors, unions, manufacturers, and construction companies. We believe AI can become the connective tissue between education, training, and employment—helping millions of people discover careers where they can thrive.
Built With
- api
- apprenticeship.gov
- career
- careeronestop
- codex
- css
- edtech
- education
- gpt-5
- hr
- mcp
- node.js
- o*net
- openai
- postgresql
- react
- router
- supabase
- tailwind
- tanstack
- technology
- typescript
- vite
- workforce
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