Building a Web Platform to Help Migrant Workers Find Jobs

Combining Client Vision and Technical Expertise

Softeq carried out the BA phase to propose the solution’s architecture and feature list and how it should be built.

The client shared some artifacts as a starting point, including marketing research, vision documents, wireframes, and mockups. Our BA team clarified the requirements and aligned them with technical possibilities. We also worked with the client to write and approve user stories. This helped us prioritize the features, provide development estimations, and visualize the process on a roadmap.

Defining and Delivering Major Features

We divided the client’s desired functionalities into main and additional features.

We agreed to deliver the following list of major features in the MVP:

• User profile settings
• Friend invitations via social media apps and SMS
• 1-on-1 communication with other users and employers
• Employer/employee ratings
• CV building and posting
• Job advertisements
• Searching and filtering for CVs and requesting interviews (for employers)
• Searching and filtering for jobs and contacting employers (for employees)
• Notification settings
• Content management and monitoring by administrators for user-generated content
• Feed page with up-to-date major events (e.g., country news, updates on work processes, visas, and regulations, and all religious celebrations)
• Customer support containing FAQs and contact information

Additional functionality will be developed after the major features have been tested among real users.

Developing the Back End

The solution began as an MVP a few years ago and has now become a whole ecosystem.

Softeq used Node.js technology to create the back end. We chose the Nest.js framework as it’s built on a clear design. Plus, it only has a few simple components: controllers, modules, and providers. This makes dividing apps into microservices a breeze.

The back end is hosted on AWS Services. We used the AWS Elastic Beanstalk service to allow us to scale the app while balancing its load and monitoring its health. Web UI is hosted using the AWS Amplify tool. It helped us to quickly build and deploy the entire application. It also enables sign-in/sign-up pages to be customized to meet the client’s needs.

The solution utilizes the PostgreSQL database for its potential high-load and big-data requirements. The benefits of using PostgreSQL include:

• Enhanced performance, thanks to various optimization features
• High data reliability and disaster recovery measures, including data replication and backup options
• Support for international character sets, enabling global use
• Advanced text search capabilities, improving data-finding processes
• Handling non-relational data, including formats like JSON and XML

Developing the Front End

For the front end, we used TypeScript along with React.js and the Vite build tool. This combination had the following crucial benefits:

• Flexibility: We were able to convert the web app into a mobile app from the existing codebase. Unlike other frameworks, this prevented unnecessary work and reduced the duration of development and testing.
• Customization: We could tailor the tools with various plugins to meet our needs.
• Originality and accessibility: We developed unique, accessible, and customizable components. The team wasn’t restricted by the predefined styles often imposed by other libraries. This granted us the freedom to construct our own set of components.