CareerGuru
Theme
CareerGuru connects students with professional mentors to help them learn more about their potential fields. As we shift towards virtual oriented workspaces, students are looking to make connections with professionals through sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. CareerGuru makes the networking process for high school students much easier.
Technicality
Creating a community web application was an ambitious undertaking from the start. There are many different parts that have to work smoothly together. The most technically complex features of CareerGuru are the chat and forums. Replies to forum posts are Markdown compatible.
Collaborating through git
Our challenges began with the collaboration aspect. We decided it best if we adopted git workflows. However, not all of us had previously used git and getting everyone on the same level was one of the many challenges we faced. But now, we all feel more confident in using git for collaboration. Even the people with prior experience learnt a lot.
Front End
Since we were building a web application, we knew from the start that the codebase was going to be extensive and we would benefit greatly from pulling in a framework. We chose Svelte, since some of us had not had any prior experience with frontend web frameworks and Svelte is the most beginner-friendly we know of.
Back End
The biggest challenge, however, was the backend. Not one of us had previously developed a backend or even used a BaaS (Backend-as-a-Service). To implement our chat feature, we needed to learn everything from scratch. When we didn’t know any better, we improvised when things didn’t work out.
Design
In order to garner some site appeal, we used Figma to create a rough mockup of the site. We used UnDraw, an open-source illustration library, for vector illustrations and Iconify, the Figma plugin, for icons. Finally, we used "Coolors", a palette generator, to create a color palette. All components of the site and the overall site design were created with the user in mind.
Completion
Our project was a success! We met our goal of creating a project to aid students exploring career paths. CareerGuru effectively brings students together and builds a strong community of passionate students and mentors. In the future, we hope to continue building on the application and open it up for public use!
Contact Us
Feel free to get in touch with one of us if you have any questions or comments!
