After graduation, Moyosore Okeremi ’19 struggled during interviews as she hunted for a job in the tech industry. “I was saying things that were irrelevant because I didn’t have the know-how of how to talk in an interview,” she recalls. Now a Seattle-based software engineer at Microsoft, Okeremi interviews job applicants—and sees them struggle in a similar way. “Sometimes I don’t know what they’re thinking, and they don’t know how to walk me through their thought process.”

Okeremi and her classmates, Jovanay Carter ’19 and Jolene Bernagene ’19, recently started a company that aims to prepare students and career changers for meetings with prospective employers. Their AI-powered mock interview platform joins a growing industry, and the entrepreneurs hope to distinguish theirs with a focused marketing outreach. “The main goal is to try to get more people who look like us—more women, more Black people, and more Hispanic people—into tech,” Okeremi says. 

The trio met during freshman orientation and have stayed close. “We were all Black women coming into a very white space and looking for community,” says Carter. “We stayed glued together all through college.” They started The Dev Difference in 2023 after Carter, a tech recruiter who is pursuing her master’s in computer science at the University of Chicago, presented the idea to Okeremi and Bernagene, an M.B.A. candidate at the University of Chicago. They loved the idea. 

“There are people who look like us who face these struggles every day. We want to make sure they feel confident.” -Jolene Bernagene ’19

Carter held a May 2023 brainstorming session. “We sat around for two or three days and just planned,” she says. They settled on titles: Carter became CEO, Bernagene is COO, and Okeremi is CTO. The company’s name grew out of the goal to make a difference. “Dev,” short for software developer, was the first tech job category they tackled. 

Last June, following a year of development, The Dev Difference won the top prize of $70,000 at the Social New Venture Challenge, an annual social entrepreneurship competition at the University of Chicago. The Dev Difference website allows users to choose from several tailored mock interview decks, such as software engineer or cybersecurity engineer. It then asks users to opt for technical, behavioral, or custom interviews and to select from a variety of question packs. An onscreen interviewer powered by AI appears and asks questions. By drilling down on a user’s specific skills, needs, and interests, the AI can fine-tune questions, asking only what will be most helpful. Users respond verbally. The site analyzes the answers and immediately spits out feedback. The system has more than 1,000 questions it can pose.

“It helped me replicate the back and forth of a real interview,” says Kaylie Sampson ’25, who worked fulltime as a software engineer intern at Duolingo last summer. Sampson used The Dev Difference several times during beta testing. Two DAM interns also gave the program a try. “It allows the user to get right to practice,” says one. “I thought the feedback, action steps, and sample solutions were extremely helpful.”

For now, there’s no charge to use the tech. The founders are meeting with investors with an eye toward growth. They’ve also pitched universities, including historically Black colleges, to buy group subscriptions for their students at a cost of between $10,000 and $25,000 per school. Ten universities have started pilot programs, including the Women in Computer Science group at Dartmouth. The College’s professional development center could be next. The Dev Difference also aims to eventually connect recruiters with well-prepared job seekers.

“There are people who look like us who face these struggles every day,” says Bernagene. “We want to make sure they feel confident.”                         

Danielle Furfaro wrote about theater producer Luke Katler ’15 in the July/August 2022 DAM.