Education & Access

OpenPath

AI-powered career discovery & explainable 5-factor skill matching platform for students and recruiters.

Demo video

What it does

OpenPath solves the black-box recruitment problem for college students and freshers. Instead of sending generic rejections, OpenPath provides: 1. 100% Explainable 5-Factor Matching: A transparent mathematical score across Technical Skills (40%), Academics (20%), Location (20%), Industry (10%), and Experience (10%). 2. Actionable Skill Gap Analysis: Highlights exact missing competencies with personalized 5-stage learning roadmaps to bridge gaps. 3. AI Career Mentor: A real-time, context-aware AI streaming mentor that analyzes student profiles against live job requirements to suggest instant action plans. 4. Dual-Sided Ecosystem: A dedicated student hub (digital resume, application pipeline, 3D skill galaxy) alongside a full employer recruitment suite (candidate ranking, stage progression). 5. Live Verification: Enterprise-grade passwordless and registration email OTP verification powered by Brevo HTTPS API.

Inspiration

Millions of college students and freshers apply to entry-level jobs and internships, only to receive silent automated rejections from black-box ATS algorithms without any explanation or actionable feedback. We built OpenPath to democratize opportunity discovery. Our goal is to replace opaque hiring with complete transparency—giving students clear visibility into why they match a role, what specific skills they are missing, and how they can upskill to become interview-ready.

How we built it

OpenPath is built as a production-grade full-stack web application: • Frontend: React 19 + Vite 8 SPA styled with a responsive modular design system, Three.js 3D particle constellation, Lucide icons, jsPDF for instant resume generation, and Zustand for reactive client state. • Backend: Node.js with Express REST API featuring modular services, JWT cookie/bearer security, sliding-window rate limiters, and clean MVC routing. • Database: MongoDB Atlas cloud cluster with Mongoose ORM for canonical skill taxonomies, user profiles, applications, and listings. • AI Engine: Built-in domain-specific career intelligence streaming engine with local Ollama support and zero-latency cloud streaming fallback. • Email Service: Brevo v3 HTTPS REST API (Port 443) ensuring reliable, firewall-resilient live OTP delivery to user Gmail inboxes. • Deployment: Full-stack cloud deployment on Render (Static frontend + Web service backend).

Challenges we ran into

1. Cloud SMTP Port Blocking: Modern cloud hosts (like Render free tier) block outbound SMTP ports (25/465/587). We resolved this by integrating Brevo's v3 HTTPS REST API on Port 443, ensuring 100% reliable cloud OTP delivery. 2. Cloud AI Inference: Running heavy local LLMs like Ollama in 512MB RAM cloud containers caused performance bottlenecks. We architected a dual-engine career intelligence service that seamlessly streams domain-specific guidance on the cloud while supporting local Ollama models when available. 3. Explainable Algorithmic Scoring: Designing a deterministic 5-factor mathematical model that balances technical skills, education, and location without introducing recruiter bias or opaque black boxes.

What's next

1. University Campus Partnerships: Partnering with engineering colleges and universities to integrate OpenPath directly with campus placement cells. 2. Automated GitHub & Portfolio Sync: Enabling one-click profile enrichment by scanning candidate GitHub repositories and project commits to automatically verify technical skills. 3. Interactive AI Mock Interviews: Expanding the AI Career Mentor to conduct real-time voice and text technical mock interviews with personalized scorecards. 4. Micro-Credential Verification: Partnering with online learning platforms (Coursera, freeCodeCamp) to issue verified skill badges directly contributing to the 5-Factor Technical Match score.