Career Guidance Web Platform

A perfect solution for students, teachers, and parents based on Careerfit's 40 years of experience.

The Company and Product

CareerFit started as a pen & paper set of assessments supporting people without professional experience to find their path.

Having career guidance experience for over 40 years now, CareerFit knows how to leverage data to help students find professions they’re good at and will enjoy doing.

The platform allows students to take a set of 3 aptitude assessments (verbal, abstract, and numerical) and 1 interest inventory assessment. With a total of 300 questions, the algorithm compares the answers with the person’s likes and dislikes, to propose a shortlist of 16 career choices ideally suited to each participant.

Client’s feedback

Stephen Shortt

CEO at CareerFit

Solid Platform

The developers are really responsive and would immediately fix any bugs we’d encountered. Even though we’re two different companies, I really feel we were one team. Both parties brought things to the table, and I’m happy with the result. The app is more polished than I expected.

Scope and Highlights

UX/UI PRODUCT DESIGN

REACT AND NODE.JS

WEEKLY CHECK-INS

USERS

420%

INCREASE IN REVENUE

MONTHS TO LAUNCH THE APP

The Challenge

The client reached out to us with a clunky MVP that was not user-friendly for any of the parties (students, teachers or administrators).

The goal was to create an app from scratch, that would work with an algorithm that properly calculates the score and helps link the data to an accurate career list suggestion.

Although the backend was the main challenge of this project, the frontend and app design also required care and a thorough architecture. The nature of this app is academic, with a large pack of questions, but students (the primary users of the app) had to find it attractive to use and in sync with current trends and popular apps. The app required a great balance between business and user needs.

The key challenges of the project included:

Working with an algorithm for accurate results to fit their business model.
Create an academic app with an eye-catching design, attractive to students.
Create a user-friendly and functional admin panel to help our client manage all the schools and their own clients.

The process

Thorough process of design, architecture and testing

Close collaboration and weekly updates

Short feedback loop because of allowing the client to access the staging environment

Thorough process of design, architecture and testing

Close collaboration and weekly updates

Short feedback loop because of allowing the client to access the staging environment

The Process

Since the client’s first MVP wasn’t a good fit for their needs, their business plan, general idea, and thoughts around the design were pretty much established.

However, they relied on us to create the frontend, backend, and product design of the app. The digitalization of their business was crucial to advance in the business with an accurate and detailed report - not possible with only a pen & paper version.

The new product had to be developed from scratch. For the backend we used Node.js, and for the frontend we used React and Typescript. This type of tech stack fits well and the team consisted of 4 developers, 1 designer, 1 quality assurance engineer and 1 project manager.

We worked in sprints and iterations. After each iteration, we presented our progress to the client almost weekly, using demos. This continuous delivery made our development visible to the client and gave us the opportunity to get their live feedback. Thanks to this, adjustments could be made on the go.

The development process of the first complete version (a more scaled-up product than an MVP) lasted around 6 months. During this timeline, QA testing was also conducted on both our side and the client’s side. Apart from the main product, we also developed a second app for the client, a very basic admin panel so they could manage all their clients.

Our core actions were:

A thorough process on the app’s design and architecture, and proper testing before release.
Close collaboration and weekly updates that kept the client in the loop, and overseeing the process.
Allowing the client to use the app even before it was ready, helping with the staging environment, and giving live feedback.

Team’s voice

Łukasz Pawłowski

Senior Project Manager

A true partner-like collaboration

Being involved in the process from the very beginning and giving suggestions that were well-received, allowed us to feel a partner-like collaboration. Establishing this partnership was the most valuable part of the project. After 6 months we created and delivered a whole product from scratch. It’s satisfying seeing the client happy with the result and recommending us to others.

The Outcome

The result was a beautifully designed application for the educational market, which several Irish schools already have access to.

The application was released at the beginning of 2021, and as of the beginning of 2022, the app already had 2k users and presented a 420% increase in revenue.

Close cooperation with the client was one of the keys to success. Their knowledge, detailed search, and exact KPIs gave us a strong head-start. Being open to suggestions at every stage of our collaboration, and the overall ownership of our own roles, allowed us to rely on each other and for both parties to be happy with the process and the result.

The app is still growing and we’re currently introducing new features for the administrator, to help the client gather new schools and propose some new deals. For the end-users, we have smaller features that are still being iterated as the need for them shows.

The client has successfully digitized the business. The use of tech has made it possible for a strong algorithm and more accurate results. The app is also ready for scale-up, which allows for easy expansions to other countries. Future plans are to expand to other markets and create multilingual versions.

The success of the product can be shown with:

420% of revenue increase compared to their previous MVP version.
2000 users and counting. A planned market expansion to other countries.
Plans for another collaboration: a second application.