Elmhurst University junior Danil Denha took first place at the Fall 2024 Bluejay Tank Pitch Competition for his business idea: a digital tool designed to help job applicants create a tailored resume for each role they apply to.
Denha, a computer science major from Ukraine, won $1,500 for GetHired, which would support job and internship seekers in a competitive market by using artificial intelligence to customize their resumes to align with specific openings.
“When I was applying for internships last year, I was advised that optimizing my resume by tweaking it for each job description would help me get my foot in the door,” Denha says. “But when you’re applying for a lot of positions, making those changes takes a lot of time. I thought there had to be a better way, so I started developing one.”
The twice-annual Bluejay Tank Pitch Competition gives students firsthand experience in developing and presenting a creative business or nonprofit idea. This fall’s competition, which took place last month in the Mill Theatre, featured seven presentations on ideas ranging from a campus food delivery service to an AI-driven app designed to improve financial literacy.
Emma Selle, a senior from Spokane, Wash., with a double major in theatre and business administration, won the second-place prize of $1,000 for AudioDrama, an audio collection of play scripts and other theatrical texts. The goal of the startup is to bring theater to life with high-quality recordings and narrated stage directions.
Beth Barnes, a senior from Elgin, Ill., who is majoring in psychology, won third place and $500 for Lucid, an app that would use advanced technology to enable users to re-create dreams through pictures, videos, audio and sensory data. Lucid would also allow users to share their experiences with a global community.
Participants had 10 minutes each to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges, including successful entrepreneurs Farah Budd, Frank Filippi, Laurence Hayward, Paul Kiser and Christian Vanstedum ’22, who won first place at the Fall 2021 Bluejay Tank Pitch Competition for his mobile dating app, Spark.
Contestants were judged on several criteria: the panel’s first impressions about the business proposal, the delivery of the pitch, the content in the proposal, the quality of the digital component to the idea (such as a website or app), and their ability to answer the judges’ questions confidently and clearly.
Opportunities like the Bluejay Tank competition exemplify Elmhurst University’s focus on offering a well-rounded curriculum combined with professional preparation, and enable students to learn best practices and make professional connections. Denha, who plans to use the prize money to hire a developer, notes that winning the competition was a validating experience.
“Hearing the feedback at the competition confirmed that my project is a good one,” he says. “It has the potential to help anyone who’s looking for a job. Winning gave me the motivation to keep moving forward.”
View the recording to see the winning presentations.