SAN JOSE — An assignment for a required course at San Jose State University led to the creation of a tool for laid-off federal employees.
FedBridge, an AI-powered platform, says it has helped "thousands of laid-off federal workers who've successfully restarted their careers with FedBridge."
The website, the platform, and everything that has to do with FedBridge comes from four SJSU students in the first year of their graduate program: Saim Sheikh, Khanh Chung, Dat Tri Tat, and Rusheek Ratna Reddy Gade.
Grouped together for a class project, their assignment was clear, but not exactly simple: create a digital platform or app that can significantly impact people.
"Being engineers, our attention typically centers around technology for much of the time. However, in this instance, (our professor) encouraged us to consider ways in which we could utilize technology to create a tangible effect in the actual world," Khanh stated.
In February, when they were assigned, federal layoffs were making the news headlines.
It started with the 'Fork in the Road' email, which offered a compensation plan for government employees who decided to step down by Feb. 12.
Saim mentioned that through LinkedIn and other social media platforms, they carried out informational interviews to investigate the particular challenges faced by federal workers who were let go.
"Federal employees informed me that frequently individuals possess a single skill set which they continually utilize, often an outdated one," Saim explained. "The technology employed within federal agencies lags behind when contrasted with contemporary practices found in both modern organizations and those in the private sector." Consequently, this leads to a considerable disparity in skill levels between government staff members and their counterparts working for private companies.
FedBridge strives to close that gap via its web-based program.
When users upload their resumes, this information is utilized to generate an automatic profile. This profile subsequently helps retrieve personalized career recommendations and job listings from multiple sources; however, certain opportunities might necessitate particular qualifications.
"We're actually recommending the certifications to take, and what classes you can take to gear you towards passing those exams for that certification," Saim said. "It's automatically supposed to find out who you are based on your profile and recommend you the jobs based on your equation from there. You don't have to click anything. You don't have to search anything. That was essentially the idea."
FedBridge additionally offers an AI-driven interview platform designed to help potential employees get ready.
The SJSU team mentioned that building and advancing the application required a minimum of 200 hours, excluding the time needed for the students to learn prior to implementing it into FedBridge.
"When I learn, I don't care about the time," said Dat, who his teammates claim is the hardest and most sleepless teammate.
Rusheek stated, "At the beginning, we weren't aware of all the details. We gained significant knowledge, largely due to Professor Ranjan’s guidance."
Professor Rakesh Ranjan often finds himself outside the classroom, yet it seemed unlikely for him to remain absent from campus altogether. Despite being an IBM executive working full-time, he comes from a family with 15 educators in its history.
"It runs in my blood. Teaching is more about having an industry-academia collaboration, and sharing the industry knowledge with the students, my fellow Spartans. And giving back to the community." Ranjan said. "I tell my students 'demo or die.' It's my motto. You have an idea, you create something, you demo it, you validate your proof of concept, and that's how you learn."
Over the course of his group project, Ranjan has encountered numerous proposals and concepts. While some were subpar and others commendable, FedBridge stood out as something entirely distinct from everything else he had seen before.
"One of the (teams) built an Airbnb expense management system. It's very useful, but (FedBridge) was a really unique project because they really understood the pain point of all these federal workers that were being laid off," he said. "Imagine the people working in USAID for 10-25 years. They have such a unique skill set, for example, in the food supply chain. For these professionals who've been affected, they didn't know (the layoffs) were coming. They didn't have a resume. They didn't have a LinkedIn profile. (It's) for (federal workers) to understand that they have a very enriching and valuable experience that can potentially be translated to a supply chain management job in Walmart or Amazon."