About the Project

Inspiration

As a teenager in Canada, I noticed how hard it is for people my age to get jobs or internships. Even when teens are responsible and skilled, employers often assume we don’t have enough experience. Platforms like LinkedIn don’t really capture what teens actually do—hours spent volunteering, real projects completed, or supervisor feedback. I wanted to create a platform that not only showcases teens’ talents but also makes it easy for employers to see their reliability and availability.

What I Learned

Building this project taught me:

• How to design dynamic profiles that show actual effort, not just years.
• The importance of availability management, especially for teens balancing school and work.
• How verifying achievements and supervisor feedback increases trust for both teens and employers.
• The technical side: creating forms, badges, and a schedule system that updates in real time.

How I Built It

The MVP focuses on three main components:

Profile System

• Teens can add skills, certificates, projects, and volunteer experience.
• Supervisors can leave remarks linked to hours spent.
• Badges display measurable achievements.

Availability Scheduler

• Teens input free times with a calendar or dropdown.
• Recruiters can filter candidates based on availability.

Verified & Safe Access

• Teens and recruiters are verified to protect privacy and ensure safety.
• Only authorized users can see sensitive profile details.

The backend stores all data locally for MVP purposes using JSON or a simple database, and the frontend dynamically updates profiles and schedules.

Challenges

• Capturing real effort: Designing a system that measures hours worked and links them to impact without being overwhelming.
• Balancing simplicity and detail: Teens should be able to quickly fill profiles, but recruiters need enough info to make decisions.
• Safety & verification: Ensuring the platform is safe for teens required careful thinking about verification and privacy rules.
• Motivation for teens: Designing badges and incentives that encourage teens to update their profiles regularly.

Next Steps

• Implement automatic badge earning for verified volunteer projects.
• Add analytics for teens to track their skills growth over time.
• Expand recruiter matching with more filters for skills, availability, and impact.

Built With

• html5
• javascript
• json