Over the past summer, we both interned within the startup ecosystem, at a startup and an accelerator, and we noticed the vast gap between what students learn in the classroom and what occurs in the real world. We realized that the skillsets and qualities that make individuals successful in the workforce cannot be taught in a classroom setting and are not tested during the interview process; traits such as patience, adaptability, and efficiency in learning. We also realized that a resume may not capture a person's full capabilities so we want to create a platform for individuals to showcase additional traits that are useful in the industry which is why we came up with Project ID.
Using React/NodeJS and APIs from Qlik and Google Cloud (Natural Language), we built Product ID (which has two meanings; ID as in an individual's Identity as well as Inclusive and Diversity), which gathers numerical data from an applicant’s game and test results as well as analyzes short answer responses to determine their best personality traits and conglomerating all their scores into a simple to read and interactive scatter plot for employers and recruiters to utilize. This provides a holistic portrayal of applicants, including those who may be at a disadvantage for not being able to effectively communicate their past experiences or the abilities they have to succeed if they were given an opportunity to learn and contribute.
Through countless hours of debugging and struggling with APIs, we finally managed to successfully compile all our code this morning, during the last few hours of the hackathon. It has been an amazing and extremely rewarding experience as this is both of our first times participating in a hackathon, creating a full-stack project from start to end, and even using APIs! Despite the difficulties, we persisted through the lack of sleep and searching for the missing parentheses to gain exposure to the enjoyable art of hacking with the help of amazing mentors.
Our biggest future struggle would be scaling our product, especially continuously creating unique tests that examine the applicants’ skills and convincing employers and recruiters that this idea is viable. Many firms and companies have procedures already in place for their recruitment processes, and if they consider these processes to be currently working for them, there is very little incentive for them to deviate from such practices. For this very reason, we are looking to break into the industry by focusing on startups that only have a handful of employees and have a fast-paced environment.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.