Project Description

Target Audience

JobTracker is an application for college students who are applying for internships and full-time jobs in the tech industry to help them organize their job applications.

Why use this application?

Currently, college students use Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets spreadsheets or Notion to track their job applications for internships and new grad positions. Updating and maintaining these spreadsheets requires a lot of manual work.

Although templates exist, there is no template that is easily adaptable to the different number and kinds of stages during the application process that a company can have.

For example, some companies have online assessments. Other companies have take-home assignments. Some companies have only 2 interviews, while other have 6. To accommodate these differences, you usually have to manually add new columns to your spreadsheets. This has the problem of creating lots of wasted space for exceptional cases.

JobTracker will make it easy to track these various stages. It will also allow users to track other useful information for applying to internships and new grad positions, such as:

• Notes on each stage of the application process

Why build it?

As university students who are interested in finding full-time jobs after graduation, this is an application we would use. The hunt for internships and new grad jobs is often one of the most stressful periods in a college student’s life. By making this application, we can help ourselves and other college students decrease their stress, save time, and approach the job application process more effectively.

Technical Description

User Stories (MVP)

Priority	User	Description
P0	As a student applying to internships	I would like to track which positions and companies I have applied to, so I can know how many I have applied to and when I applied to each.
P0	As a student applying to internships	I want to track the URL of the position so I can find the job posting again easily and remember what the position details were.
P0	As a student applying to internships	I want to know where I am in the job application process for a company
P1	As a student applying to internships	I want to know deadlines and dates for each stage of the application process so I can make sure I complete each stage on time.
P1	As a student applying to internships	I want to keep notes on each stage of the interview process so I can remember my experiences with each stage and learn from them.

Stretch Goals

• Search by company name, position name
• Organize applications by internship season and year (winter 2021, fall 2021, summer 2022, etc)
• Sort and filter applications by company name, location, etc
• Send email reminders about online assessments so you don’t forget to include them
• Structured interview notes, such as impressions, interview questions, links to the leetcode questions

Implementation

As a student applying to internships, I would like to track which positions and companies I have applied to, so I can know how many I have applied to and when I applied to each.

Users can create an account in the web client UI, which sends a POST request to /v1/users and inserts a record in the Users table in a Postgres DB. Sessions will be managed by Redis, and authentication information will be passed using the Authentication header. Once authenticated, users can add applications and stages of each application, and view and modify this information. When a user visits their home page, a GET request to /v1/users/{UserID} or /v1/users/me endpoint queries the applications Postgres table to query all applications for the UserID and returns the records as JSON to the client to be displayed in the UI.

As a student applying to internships, I want to track the URL of the position so I can find the job posting again easily and remember what the position details were.

The new application creation form will have a positionURL field that will record this information. On POST request to the /v1/applications endpoint, the server will store the application record to the Postgres table. When rendering the information for an application, a GET request will be performed on the /v1/applications/{ApplicationID} endpoint to retrieve the record with the URL information.

As a student applying to internships, I want to know where I am in the job application process for a company

The data model for a job application has a status field that can be updated by the user from the UI. This will trigger a PATCH request to /v1/applications/{ApplicationID} to update the Postgres table. When rendering the information for an application, a GET request will be performed on the /v1/applications/{ApplicationID} endpoint to retrieve the record with the status information.

As a student applying to internships, I want to know deadlines and dates for each stage of the application process so I can make sure I complete each stage on time.

The application stage data model has a stageDate field to store either an interview date or deadline. Users can enter this information in a form when creating a new stage from the client UI, which will trigger a POST request to the /v1/stages API, and write a record for a stage to the stages Postgres database. When a user clicks into an application, this will send a GET request to /v1/applications/{ApplicationID}/stages, which will query all stage records for the ApplicationID from the stages table and display the stage info including the date.

As a student applying to internships, I want to keep notes on each stage of the interview process so I can remember my experiences with each stage and learn from them.

This will be implemented very similarly to stage dates. In addition to a date field, the Stages table will also have a large varchar column to store freeform notes about the interview.

Endpoints

/v1/sessions

Manages CRUD operations for sessions used for user authentication and authorization.

Handlers

• SessionsHandler()
• SpecificSessionHandler()

Endpoint Path	Functionality	Method	Statuses
/v1/sessions	Begin a session	POST	201 (Created)
/v1/sessions/mine	End a session	DELETE	200 (OK), 404 (Not Found)

/v1/users

Manages CRUD operations for user accounts.

Endpoint Path	Functionality	Method	Statuses
/v1/users	Put a user into the store	POST	201 (Created)
/v1/users/{UserID}*	Read a user from the store	GET	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/users/{UserID}*	Update a user	PATCH	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/users/{UserID}/applications*	Read all applications for a user	GET	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/users/{UserID}/applications*	Put an application into the store	POST	201 (Created), 401 (Unauthorized)

• If UserID = me, perform the operations for the currently authenticated user

Handlers

• UsersHandler()
• SpecificUserHandler()

/v1/applications

Manages CRUD operations for job applications.

Endpoint Path	Functionality	Method	Statuses
/v1/applications/{ApplicationID}	Read an application from the store	GET	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/applications/{ApplicationID}	Delete an application	DELETE	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/applications/{ApplicationID}	Update an application	PATCH	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/applications/{ApplicationID}	Read all stages for an application	GET	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/applications/{ApplicationID}	Put a stage into the store	POST	201 (Created), 401 (Unauthorized)

Handlers

• ApplicationsHandler()
• SpecificApplicationHandler()

/v1/stages

Manages CRUD operations for application stages.

Endpoint Path	Functionality	Method	Statuses
/v1/stages/{StageID}	Read a stage from the store	GET	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/stages/{StageID}	Delete a stage	DELETE	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)
/v1/stages/{StageID}	Update a stage	PATCH	200 (OK), 401 (Unauthorized), 404 (Not Found)

Handlers

• StagesHandler()
• SpecificStageHandler()

Appendix

Wireframes

Database Schema

Users

This table stores user profiles for every registered user.

id	int64, primary key
username	varchar(255), unique, not null
email	varchar(320), unique, not null
passHash	Bytea, not null
firstName	varchar(32), not null
lastName	varchar(32), not null

Applications

This table stores the job applications of a registered user.

id	int64, primary key
userId	int64, foreign key, not null
positionName	varchar(128), not null
positionURL	varchar(255)
company	varchar(255), not null
location	varchar(255)
status	varchar(32), not null
dateApplied	timestamp
dateReplied	timestamp

Stage

This table stores the stages of the application process for a specific application. For example: Online assessments, recruiter calls, phone interviews, behavioral interviews, coding interviews, system design interviews, take-home assignments

id	int64, primary key
applicationId	int64, foreign key, not null
stageDate	timestamp, not null
stageType	varchar(255), not null
minutes	int, not null
notes	varchar(4096)

ex:

{
stageDate: “2021-01-20 10:00:00”,
stageType: “phoneInterview”
minutes: “90”
}

{

stageDate: “2021-01-25 09:00:00”,

stageType: “codingChallenge”

minutes: “60”

}