Unlocking Your Job Potential with Catapult: GenAI-Powered Interview Prep

18

October

2024

5/5 (2)

Team 12: Felix Masselter, Taseer Samiullah, Lucas Johannsen, Mahima Panjwani

For a lot of applicant job interviews can be a challenging step in the recruitment process. From choosing the right answers to managing body language and tone, most candidates face intense pressure. With 92% of U.S. adults reporting interview anxiety, it’s clear that a solution is needed to boost confidence and help people feel more prepared (link).

That’s where our application “Catapult” comes in. Our AI-driven platform doesn’t just give you mock interviews; it immerses you in a personalised interview experience, simulating the real pressure of an interview room. With AI rapidly transforming job markets, Catapult is designed to help you stay ahead by offering real-time feedback and adaptive questioning, ensuring you’re interview-ready, no matter the role you’re aiming for.

Why Interview Prep is More Important Than Ever

The job market has never been more competitive. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, over 30% of current tasks in many jobs may soon be automated (link). While this might seem problematic, it also unveils new opportunities to use AI as a tool to enhance your job readiness.

Catapult provides a futuristic, AI-powered solution for candidates who want to excel in their application process. As more companies integrate AI into their recruitment processes, Catapult ensures that you’re not just prepared but over-prepared for every aspect of the hiring experience.

How We Stand Out

Most interview prep tools focus on text-based feedback—offering responses to typed questions. But real-life interviews are so much more than that. Body language, tone, and the ability to think under pressure all play significant roles in determining your success. Our competitors, like Google’s Interview Warmup, fall short of replicating the actual experience being limited to textual input. They miss the essence of a real-life interview, leaving you only half prepared.

Catapult steps into this gap by offering immersive, AI-generated interview simulations that mimic real-world scenarios. When you walk into a virtual interview room, your AI interviewer asks questions based on your target industry and role. As you respond, Catapult not only evaluates your answer but also assesses your body language, tone, and even your eye contact. Instant feedback helps you adjust and refine your performance, making you feel more in control and confident for the actual interview.

How Catapult Stands Out

What sets Catapult apart from other tools is its use of cutting-edge generative AI models, like Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), to create realistic, adaptive interviews. With access to platforms like Glassdoor for data collection, Catapult ensures the questions are current and industry-relevant. And here’s the kicker: we don’t just stop at industry-specific questions. Our virtual interviewer can adjust based on how you respond, taking you deeper into your own personalized interview experience.

Plus, Catapult’s AI-powered system analyzes not just the content of your answers but also your delivery. You will receive instant feedback by evaluating your performance, making each mock interview a real step towards improvement.

Our current prototype as shown below misses the visual aspect, with some latency, lacking emotional recognition and doesn’t utilise our own trained Large Language Model with job specific data. Figure 2 however, gives a taste of what the actual application could look like with more time and budget where we could integrate Generative Adversarial Network (GAN).

Figure 1: Current prototype

Figure 2: Expected final application

Designed for Growth and Impact

Our aim is to reduce interview anxiety and improve job market success. We offer a freemium model, which means that you can access basic features for free while unlocking more advanced tools with a premium subscription. Alternatively, free users can gain access to freemium features through a referral program. This allows Catapult to cater to both casual users and those intensively preparing for multiple interviews.

Going further, we are also building partnerships with universities and career centers to integrate Catapult into formal education and professional training. Imagine having Catapult as part of your future career module at RSM, guiding you step-by-step until yo are ready to nail any interview.

Potential Challenges

One of the primary concerns with our GenAI system is ensuring that the system remains fair and unbiased. We know that AI in hiring has its skeptics with 34% of people believing AI tools may be prone to bias, potentially screening out qualified candidates.

If you would like to discuss how to get involved in this journey, do not hesitate to reach out to the team.

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Generative AI and the future of Journalism

8

October

2024

No ratings yet.

Generative AI is quite rapidly transforming journalism, allowing news organisations to explore new ways to produce and deliver content. This technological shift has brought a wave of innovation, but also raises important ethical and operational challenges.

Recently I came across a New York Times article talking about how their organisation uses AI in its various forms within journalism. The publication shows how they have recently adopted generative AI to enhance its editorial process. Their efforts focus on leveraging AI to assist with tasks like data analysis and storytelling. However, the Times emphasises that AI will not replace journalists along with their core functions of reporting, writing, and editing which will remain human-driven. Instead, AI will act as a tool to streamline workflows, allowing journalists to focus on more creative aspects of their work​ (link)

Other major media organizations are also experimenting with AI. The Online News Association reports that AI can help journalists analyze large datasets, uncover patterns, and even generate first drafts of news articles. This allows news organisations to handle large reporting while maintaining accuracy and efficiency ​(link). For instance, AI-generated summaries or interactive features can present news in more engaging ways for readers. However, challenges around transparency and safeguarding the integrity of journalistic content remain important considerations ​(link).

Despite these advancements, there are concerns about bias, misinformation, and the role AI plays in editorial decision-making. AI systems, while powerful, can only be as good as the data they are trained on. This raises ethical questions about how generative AI is trained, particularly when handling sensitive topics or political events.

Generative AI offers exciting possibilities for the future of journalism, but its integration needs to be carefully manages in order to maintain trust, ethics, and quality in news reporting. As the industry continues to experiment these innovations can reshape the way we consume news.

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Why did Bitcoin fail in El Salvador and what opportunity do “stablecoins” present?

14

September

2024

5/5 (1)

I must say I have been a skeptic towards cryptocurrencies for a while and at times I would strongly advocate for why they make no sense. However, after hearing more about cryptocurrencies as a disruptive technology during our lectures I realised I should maybe give them a chance and try to understand cryptocurrencies further. When reading into them I took interest in the use of cryptocurrencies as macroeconomic instruments in some of the world’s developing regions.

El Salvador has definitely taken the spotlight amongst countries that have adopted cryptocurrencies, specifically bitcoin, on a national level. 

In 2001 the country went through a major economic restructuring with the US dollar replacing their Salvadoran Colon. This left many lower income households in confusion and then exactly 20 years later they are faced with a major change to their country’s monetary landscape (link). In June 2021 the country’s president passed the “bitcoin law”, making the digital currency Bitcoin a legal tender (link). Since then, it has been unclear to what extent this adoption has been a success, where many say it was a complete flop. 

Only a year after the passing of the Salvadoran Bitcoin Law, the majority of the population were fueled with doubt when posed with the idea of bitcoin (link). The digital wallet that was launched by the country – Chivo Wallet posed significant drawbacks to do with traceability and fraud. The Chivo Wallet is a custodial wallet which means that a third party has custody of private keys on behalf of the users (link). This meant that although transactions were verified through Chivo wallet, identities were not, which led to the risk of fraud and identity theft (link).

With the national authorities failing to mobilize the adoption of bitcoin, residents that had initially invested in Bitcoin in 2021 found themselves with bitcoin that had almost halved in value. This is since cryptocurrencies in its nature are highly volatile where its value is mostly derived from how people value it (link).

Since then many countries have hopped on a new boat of a more stable alternative called “stable coin” which is essentially a more stable cryptocurrency. To reduce the volatility that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin face, these stable cryptocurrencies are based on tokens that are flagged to the value of a fiat currency, assets or another cryptocurrency (link). Nigeria is a country that has also gone through the adoption of cryptocurrency and is now looking towards a rapid rise in stable coins. Given the reputation of Nigeria’s Naira, a USD backed stable coin assures users of price stability. It also allows users a higher ease of access to the USD. On a more macro level, when residents have access to a USD backed stable coin they are less likely to be exposed to inflation within the country (link).

With technologies under Web3 still being relatively contemporary, countries and individuals are still researching the implications of these digital technologies as financial and economic instruments. Going forward their success will largely depend on appropriate governance and public trust.

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