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Awards Students

With an eye on successful job interviews, these students are not winging it

By Ada Lang

Human resource manager Is explaining the job to the job seeker before filling out a resume on the application form to consider accepting for employment in the company.
  • Two recent graduates built the free interview‑prep app, winning the 2026 UF College of Education Research Symposium’s Best Undergraduate Poster Award.  
  • Their idea earned a Best New Hackers trophy at the inaugural WiNGHacks, catching the attention of a mentor who guided development into an AI‑powered behavioral‑interview simulator.  
  • They plan to broaden usability and expand HireGator into a comprehensive career‑prep hub. 

Let’s face it: job interviews are stressful. So, two recent computer science graduates channeled their nerve-wracking experiences into a web-based app to help people better prepare for their interviews. 

Headshot of Rachel Pu, Undergraduate Alumna
Rachel Pu
Headshot of Clarissa Cheung, Undergraduate Alumna
Clarissa Cheung

Their design won the 2026 UF College of Education Research Symposium’s Best Undergraduate Poster Award. Both are graduates from the University of Florida’s Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). 

Originally named WiNG.it, the app has been rebranded as HireGator and is the brainchild of Clarissa Cheung and Rachel Pu. Their poster, “Closing the Career Prep Gap: How WiNG.it Prepares Students for Behavioral Interviews,” details how the app interacts with and allows the user to practice with AI-powered simulations that adapt to their responses. 
 
Examples of behavioral interview questions include:  

  • “Describe a stressful situation at work and how you handled it.”  
  • “Give an example of a goal you reached and how you achieved it.”  
  • “Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake.” 

The app helps users practice their interview skills and utilize smart analytics to track their progress. AI-powered feedback gives users instant assessments of their communication skills, content and performance.  

And the best part? It’s free. 

Plato is credited with the proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and Pu can attest to that. While preparing for a behavioral interview, she searched for free, online practice tools. She found nothing useful, and the interview was a bust. That experience drove her to design a better app.  

She and Cheung entered their idea into UF’s inaugural WiNGHacks hackathon, and they won the Best New Hackers award. This caught the attention of Amanpreet Kapoor, Ph.D., an associate instructional engineering professor with the Department of Engineering Education, known as EEd. 

The 36-hour WiNGHacks was created to uplift women, non-binary and gender-non-conforming or underrepresented students in their technology journey. About 180 hackers learned new skills, networked with peers and created innovative projects.  

Kapoor has done extensive research on technical job interviews, but he recognized that behavior interviews were critical to successfully securing jobs in computing, so he told the team he’d be happy to mentor them.  

“I was excited about this project because my research expertise focused on student career development in computing,” he explained. 

With Kapoor’s guidance, WiNG.it/HireGator evolved into a comprehensive career- preparation platform to help students build confidence and land job opportunities. 

Part of that involved rebranding WiNG.it to HireGator to make its purpose clearer to new users.  The team is pursuing collaboration and funds from UF Innovate. 

Some students reported “they were able to successfully pass their interviews and secure their jobs using our application, which is extremely fulfilling to hear!” Cheung said. 

Now that their poster has received an award, what are their next steps? 

“We will soon be expanding support and testing of the app beyond computer science and engineering backgrounds and are currently working with a few professors across different disciplines to use HireGator in the classroom. Finally, we hope to expand our tool from not just a behavioral interview simulation but also add additional features to serve as a hub for career tools and practice,” Cheung explained. 

In addition to the poster award, Cheung received the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Dean Cammy Abernathy Community and Inclusion (IDEA) Award. The award recognizes students who demonstrate leadership, service, research excellence and the qualities that define a Gator Engineer.