The Idea
Whilst on exchange at the University of Virginia, myself and a fellow CS student (Jed Barson) developed an iOS application called InternSwift to centralise the job and internship search process for college students who are searching for employment.
There are a staggering amount of different websites that contain job listings, and it can be overwhelming for students to have to go through all of these and have their options presented in so many different places.
I believe that it would be far easier for students to be able to search through a centralised database that combines the listings presented at different websites into one list of options.
The goal of InternSwift is to relieve the students of some of the pressure they experience during the job search process by simplifying their search for job listings.
Screen-By-Screen Analysis
Search Home Screen: The home screen has a search bar for users to type in keyword queries pertaining to their job of interest. Below this, the user can click on the arrow icon to set their location on the location screen. Once set, this will update the prompt label next to the icon. The search button triggers the API call and subsequently sends the user to the results page. Below the search area, there is also a list of previous searches made by the user, displaying the past query.
Search Home Screen: The home screen has a search bar for users to type in keyword queries pertaining to their job of interest. Below this, the user can click on the arrow icon to set their location on the location screen. Once set, this will update the prompt label next to the icon. The search button triggers the API call and subsequently sends the user to the results page. Below the search area, there is also a list of previous searches made by the user, displaying the past query.
Location Screen: This screen allows the user to select their current location as the desired location for search, or alternatively enter another location into a text field, clicking Save in the navigation bar above to confirm this choice. Below this, we also have included information from User Defaults that can be loaded, edited and saved: location preference and job preference, as a reference point for users when coming back to the app after a break in usage.
Results Screen: This screen displays the 5 most recent job listings discovered by the API based on the keyword query and location provided by the user. Simple, clean listings consisting of the job title (in bold) and the company title below, are each accompanied by an information button, which when clicked, links the user to the web listing.
Testing
We tried a range of query formats and locations in order to assess effect on search results. This included multi-word cities and multi-word search queries, which can be handled appropriately by the URL for the API. Furthermore, we tested the average time for results to generate based on a number of searches, choosing a delay time of 5 seconds upon the API request, in order provide an adequate buffer for the JSON response to appear.
Tools
Swift, Figma, JSON, Indreed API
