Mihalis Koutouvos, Alice Lee, Daniel Valentine, Tarun Iyer, and Daniel Zeng
Our project is PackTrack, a web application that is intended to enhance the current co-op search tool NUworks at Northeastern University. On top of the existing NUworks functionality, PackTrack enables students to provide objective feedback for co-op positions they have worked at. This feedback system, in turn, provides employees at said job and other Northeastern students with valuable insights into the reality of working the respective role at said company. Companies can then make changes to their positions so that they become more enticing to future applicants by generating better reviews/feedback from other students.
On a special note, thank you to Professor Mark Fontenot for teaching us the skills necessary to complete this project.
Here is the link to the PackTrack demo, hosted on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/1036948088?share=copy. Please check submission document for Phase 3 for the password.
When it comes to applying to co-ops, it is difficult to learn more about nuanced topics of a job placement such as work culture, team environment, and skills learned on the job just from the generic application description that includes standard work hours, average salary, and responsibilities. As students, we want to find environments where our strengths can shine and ideal spaces where we can work on our weaknesses to improve our professional experiences. For example, some of us may prefer to work better in smaller teams while others may prefer to work in larger teams to create higher-impact projects. Some may also want different experiences out of their co-op: Those who are applying to more technical positions may want to maximize their ability to use a certain skill set while those who are passionate about sales may want to find positions where they can be more face-to-face with clientele. When it comes to the current NUworks job search platform, the standard application description fails to capture these nuances and does not allow students to understand their compatibility with the role outside of basic required skills. For universities who offer a co-operative education program, program administrators want to learn more about the roles and companies that a university works with. The standard application dashboard on NUworks does not provide opportunities for program administrators to receive feedback to improve the experience(s) for students. All of this together leads into the creation of PackTrack.
We want the co-op search to be as insightful and communicative as possible, so direct feedback on as many co-op posts on NUworks would help dozens to hundreds of students, employers, and Northeastern administrators alike.
In the database, we have students and student_employees. A user can be a student but not a student employee; however, a student can become a student employee once they get hired for a co-op position.
You need to be able to run Docker (so have it installed on your computer) and have VSCode (preferably) open so that you can boot up the program. For commands, please run the following:
docker build
-Create copy of .env template file; rename secret key with own password
docker compose build docker compose up -d
-Now head to localhost:8501 to see the frontend on your browser.
If we had more time, we would improve some of the finer details such as creating a larger database to handle more individuals using the application. Moreover, if this application obtains good reviews, we would need to scale it, which would take more time.
For PackTrack, we used a variety of tools to build up the project. These include MySQL, Python, Flask, Docker, and more. We used MySQL to handle the database (db) and Flask to build our API (api); we also created a Streamlit user interface (app).
The app communicates with the API, and then the API fetches data from the database; keep in mind that the API will send said data back to the Streamlit application to then be displayed on screen, in whatever context is necessary.
We used routes in the backend within the api component to be able to run queries that would then fetch data from the database.
PackTrack can handle many features that would help various users complete certain tasks. There are many, but here are a few notable ones: -Student-employees can leave (write) feedback/reviews on co-op postings in NUworks -Login (without a username/password, as specified by the assignment) as a persona like a co-op manager -Company representatives can view all company listings
To check out this program best, we will recommend Visual Studio Code. That was where we originally designed our project.