ASPIRE AI: An AI-Powered Career Coach

Abstract: In the rapidly evolving job market, students and job seekers face major challenges in selecting suitable career paths, identifying industry-required skills, and preparing effectively for recruitment processes. Traditional career counselling [1][2] methods are often manual, time-consuming, and unable to provide personalized guidance at scale. To overcome these limitations, this paper presents ASPIRE AI: An AI-Powered Career Coach, a smart web-based platform designed to provide personalized career recommendations, skill development roadmaps, resume generation, and mock interview practice using Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The proposed system analyses user academic background, interests, and skill set to recommend suitable career domains and learning paths. It integrates modern full-stack technologies such as Next.js and React [7] for frontend development, Node.js for backend services, and PostgreSQL [9] for secure data storage. The platform uses the Google Gemini API [6] to generate intelligent career suggestions, interview feedback, and professional resume/cover letter content. User authentication and secure session management are implemented through Clerk [5], and the system is deployed on Vercel [11] for scalability and accessibility. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that ASPIRE AI provides real-time, adaptive guidance with improved user engagement, making it a reliable tool for bridging the gap between education and employment by enhancing career readiness and employability.

Keywords: AI Career Coach, Career Recommendation System, Google Gemini API [6], Mock Interview System, Resume Builder, Personalized Career Guidance, NLP, Next.js, Node.js, PostgreSQL [9], Web Application