DEV Community

Cover image for Ditching the old rusty job platforms: I made my own with cool features
Sohaib’s Amir
Sohaib’s Amir

Posted on

Ditching the old rusty job platforms: I made my own with cool features

#devchallenge #githubchallenge #githubcopilot #webdev

GitHub “Finish-Up-A-Thon” Challenge Submission

This is the submission for the https://dev.to/challenges/github-2026-05-21

What I Built

Job Hooker is a platform which lets you generate tailored cover letters, resumes and upwork proposals based on your profile and job post. You can create as many job feeds as you want each having a different criteria for job matching. For each job, you can create dedicated profile and it will generate your cv combining your profile and job requirements. Moreover, the platform provides you 2 ways to notify you about the new jobs: Email and telegram connectivity.

Tech Stack

  • Frontend: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Axios
  • Backend: Nest js, TypeScript, Prisma, Supabase, NodeMailer, JWT
  • AI Integration: Gemini 2.5 Flash (for tailored cover letters, resumes & proposals)

Demo

The Comeback Story



I started this project last year in December. I had enough with job platforms which need you to tailor your cover letter and cv for every other job opening. Hence, I came up with the idea of generating cover letter and cvs per job requiements and individuals' skills. My goal was pinpoint clear: build a platform that fetches verified openings from different platforms (checks the posted date and sometimes company's offical handler) and lets the user generate cover letters and cvs tailored according to the job post. I also had a plan to connect telegram and email so user can directly get notified about the new jobs without bothering to check on the site.

Before: The job feed system was broken and platform selection was limited to only upwork and linkedin. There was no cache system in place so jobs being already fetched never got saved. There was no option to generate cover letter, resume or proposal. The Dashboard screen was poorly designed and Boarding screen was missing. Furthermore, the feed dialog was rigid and had a lot of bugs considering the option to select country, salary for fixed period vs hourly.

What I fixed?

  • Onboarding Experience: Added a dedicated boarding screen featuring an integrated tutorial video and a dynamic spinning animation in the hero section.
  • UI/UX Revamp: Completely overhauled the main Dashboard screen and redesigned the Feed Creation dialog to align with the application theme.
  • Intelligent Document Generation: Integrated Gemini 2.5 Flash into the backend to generate uniquely tailored cover letters and resumes, managed via new selection checkboxes on job posts.
  • Upwork Integration: Implemented a tailored proposal generator for Upwork listings, allowing users to modify text directly within a built-in bottom panel editor window on the dashboard.

My Experience with GitHub Copilot

Database & Backend Infrastructure

  • Database Schema: Updated the Prisma schema (schema.prisma) and generated a new database migration file.
  • API Architecture: Created a new API endpoint specifically to handle user email subscriptions.
  • Backend Modules: Introduced a new email feature ecosystem by creating:
    • An email module to encapsulate the logic.
    • A controller to handle incoming HTTP requests for email operations.
    • A service layer to manage business logic.
  • Email Service Integration: Set up and configured Nodemailer within the backend service to programmatically dispatch job alerts to user email accounts.

Frontend & User Interface

  • Dashboard Job Panel: Revamped the layout and visual structure to make the job panel more modern and visually appealing.
  • Notification Panel: Introduced a new local state to track and manage user Email Subscription preferences.
  • Feed Dialog: Overhauled the dialog component's styling, updating its color palette to seamlessly match the global application theme.

It was a super cool experience working on this project. This challenge gave me the opportunity to bring my project back to life. It was a real rush working & fixing through several features by the closing deadline.

Top comments (0)