Summer Job Fair
KAKTI · In-House
Summer Job Fair was a prototype web app for the US Dept. of Labor’s Summer Jobs+ program and API.
The idea is to make a tangled mess of job data much easier to find and read, ushering it into the hands of young folks who need summer gigs.
It was announced as a winner of the Summer Jobs+ code sprint on the White House blog.
Decay
By mid-2016, too many services had changed, and the site had ceased working. It was surprising that it lasted as long as it did—4 years—on free hosting and deprecated APIs. Technology marches on.
In 2018, just about all the programs and services mentioned here are no more, including (in some sense) the White House itself.
The following is a glimpse into the project as it was back then.
Listing
The app automatically pulls and filters all the results for a search–ordinarily, users would have to page through results 10 at a time, ignoring duplicates and out-of-date listings.
It displays everything simply and syncs up with the map where possible.
Map
The map attempts to pinpoint every job, guessing locations that are unlisted or incorrect. Many of the listings had data quality errors, but could often be fixed.
The underlying technology stack for mapping is Leaflet, Nominatim, and the now-long-gone Yahoo Local API.
Backend
The backend provides a simple caching layer that speeds things up, hides some odd API design choices, and protects access credentials.