Automate Job Feed Scraping & Posting To Scale-Up Your Business

Nowadays companies use an ATS (Application Tracking System) to post jobs and find the perfect candidates. But in a competitive industry like healthcare, candidates won’t necessarily come to your company’s career site and search for jobs. HR personnel would then copy their job lists and go to different career websites and post them. However, there are few problems with this manual approach. First, it requires a lot of manual work. When it comes to copy and paste for different career websites, it often involves clerical error. As a result, candidates get confused and give a listing a pass. Second, your posts on different sites won’t be updated. What it means is that once you change little details on the job description. You will have to manually go back and amend each post.

As a result, it is not hard to imagine even if you have good company, you don’t have the best fishing net to capture all the best candidates. However, there is an excellent tool that saves HR a ton of time as well as sourcing as many good candidates as possible from different career sites. A scraping tool like Octoparse is the answer to creating an automated job board that integrates with a company’s ATS and pushing the latest listings to different career sites.

Breathing is automated. It makes our life so easy. We realize its importance, even more, when we see people going on ventilators. But are your HR operations and processes automated? Is your job creation, listing, interviewing, and hiring process fully optimized?

We ask these questions as we see a lot of companies are unnecessarily struggling. Several enterprises are still manually posting their vacancies to different job boards. We at Octoparse believe it’s quite orthodox in the age of AI & data science.

“The world is changing whether you like it or not. Get involved or get left behind.” – Dave Waters

And so, in this article, we emphasize the importance of automating some of the cumbersome HR processes & operations. We shall demonstrate the use of Web crawling to scrape job listings from career sites. Then, we shall post scraped job data automatically to job boards of your choice using XML job feeds.

We provide you with a seamless job wrapping solution stack consisting of an Applicant tracking system (ATS), Octoparse Scraping services, and XML feeds. This would be easily integrable into your existing HR tech stack.

Not to mention, this relieves the HR team from manual work and enables them to focus on more critical aspects of the hiring cycle i.e., creating a perfect job description, training & onboarding the talent etc.

Table of Contents

What is an Application Tracking System (ATS)?

An applicant tracking system or ATS is a software tool for HRs to accelerate and automate all the mundane routine tasks involved in the hiring process i.e., from sourcing candidates to onboarding new employees.

ATS, also known as Talent Management System, is very similar to CRM tools. It’s just that an applicant tracking system is dedicatedly designed, developed, and used for hiring and staffing purposes.

The basic functionality of an ATS is to avail a centralized enterprise HR database to store applicant’s information. A good ATS should also be able to parse the resume i.e., extract data from several different formats of resumes submitted by applicants and organize this data into a common structured information format.

Another crucial feature of ATS is resume filtering & applicant ranking analysis. Individual screening of each resume is not just a time-consuming process but also quite inefficient. Applicant tracking systems magnanimously accelerate this screening process by auto filtering resumes based on certain job-related keywords, candidate experience, schools attended, expected CTC, and several other factoring filters.

Apart from these, an advanced ATS would also allow formulating a workflow to automate this screening process. HRs can prepare a customized workflow to communicate interview-call emails to eligible candidates, not selected messages to filtered out applicants. Applicant tracking systems can keep a record of resumes based on ratings for future employment purposes.

As per a report, 98% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS. There are multiple ATS software providers in the market like Taleo, Workday, Lever, SmartRecruiters, etc. Several open-source alternatives are also present. Choose wisely the one that best suits your enterprise requirements.

What is Web Scraping & Job Wrapping?

Web scraping is a process of programmatically automating data extraction processes from websites. We can scrape almost any website on the internet, not just in the domain of the job but financial websites, news websites, social media, and as said almost every website.

Web scraping is very useful for data-led processes. It’s used for keeping an eye on competitors, analyzing competitor strategies, market trends research, predictive analytics, and even for building aggregator businesses like industry-niche job websites.

For more insights on web scraping, visit octoparse blog.

Job wrapping is a process of scraping jobs from employer’s career pages or ATSes. Next, it involves structuring this scraped job data into a predefined format. Lastly, this well-formatted and scraped job data is posted on different employment forums and job boards like Linkedin, indeed.

We demonstrate the job scraping & wrapping process with an example in the coming sections. First, let’s understand how automated scraping, formatting, and posting of job vacancies can help different stakeholders i.e., employers, recruiters & job boards.

Business use cases of Job scraping for employers

Time efficiency, Improving recruitment process

Automating job postings directly from your career pages (or ATSes) through an API interface to different job portals eliminates the delay introduced in hiring processes through manual posting of jobs. This saves a significant amount of time and resources. HR teams can use this extra available time to optimize organizational costs and better engage the employees

Process efficiency & cost efficiency

Again, when bots are in control of posting and updating job posts on various job portals, there are minimal chances of errors, duplicacy, or delay introduced by humans. Using job scraping services, employers can ensure timely posting of jobs to the right platforms at the right time. Employers don’t have to liquidate their budget on dedicated teams to keep Job postings relevant and fresh on different job boards.

Competitor analysis

Scraping job postings of competitors can give you an insight into the technologies, products, or new regions they are venturing into. It enables you to be prepared for the future challenges and competition posed by them to your business. Hiring new talent is also an indicator of business scalability. So, if your competitor is hiring excessively in a new region, maybe there is good growth potential in there and you might also be willing to explore the possibilities.

Business use cases of Job scraping for job boards

Reinvent the experience you deliver to candidates & clients

Employers need talent all the time i.e, enterprises are hiring recurrently. And candidates need a job all the time. Job boards and HRs are like matrimonial matchmakers in the corporate world. They match the right talent with the right career.

So, when there are so many options out there, what is it that would bring a client and/or a candidate to choose your job board in their hunt for talent and career respectively?

In our understanding, it’s the experience you deliver that keeps them hooked to your platform.

Personalized recommendation, Deliver seamless job-search experience to candidates

Candidates need info about the right kind of opportunities at the right time i.e., they want the FASTEST recommendation of PERSONALIZED opportunities. With a powerful job scraping infrastructure, you could ensure that your job board is the first choice of any candidate looking for a job in the niche you serve.

If you chose a powerful and effective scraping service like Octoparse, you can scrape websites with all the vital details related to the job opportunity. You can structure it as you like to enable filtering jobs based on keywords, location, skills, salary, experience, and several other factors. This in turn empowers you to make precise job recommendations to candidates based on their skills and other preferences.

Data integrity, Scraping millions of job listings, and Mapping them to the right format

Employers need the right talent as and when the need arises. When you have the right pool of job-seeking candidates and when you can make precise talent-to-opportunity matchmaking, your ‘employer’ clients would automatically be happy with the service.

Additionally, different enterprise career pages or ATS’s have different formatting and data representation structure. It becomes extra overhead for job boards executives to scrape thousands and millions of company career pages as well as map the formatting to the one that fits their own.

Again, dedicated web scraping services come to the rescue and take care of the entire process so that executives like yourself can focus on scaling and growing the business.

Why do independent recruiting HRs use web scraping services?

Not just the job boards, employers, and candidates but even independent freelance recruitment consultants can exploit the benefits of job scraping. Individual HRs often have a particular set of niches that they serve. For example, a CXO-level executive search HR. These talent consultants need a frequent supply of job data to keep their businesses blossoming.

Personalized pitching to enterprises for subscribing to recruitment services

HRs can leverage job scraping services to stay updated about vacancies in their network organizations and can even utilize job data extraction services to scale up their business into a full-fledged HR recruitment agency. HRs can target specific companies for their services and utilize the scraped job data to personalize their pitch.

How to scrape jobs & career pages

There are different technology-led ways to scrape job sites with exponentially high efficiency compared to traditional manual data extraction processes. We list a few broad categories in the following sections –

Custom local scrapers

These are site-specific job scraping scripts written in python, PHP, java, or javascript. These job crawling scripts are executed/run on your local system to extract job data. These can even be scheduled but your system needs to be up and running all the time. This interferes with system performance and your day-to-day digital tasks.

Custom Cloud scrapers

We can also run customized job scraping scripts in the cloud. Say, using docker and EC2. This is efficient but it needs technical know-how of cloud services. Any inconsistency or mishap can cause a serious dent in company finances. Like custom local scrapers, these too need regular modifications and updates as the target website changes.

Generic scrapers

These make use of machine learning algorithms and NLP to scrape bulk websites. It’s very complex and needs deep technical know-how. It is efficient but data integrity is not 100% guaranteed.

Visual / Virtual scrapers, Data as a service

These are GUI-based job scraping services. It’s very easy to leverage such services as you don’t need to be a technically sound person to use these. Parsehub and Octoparse.io are good examples of visual virtual scrapers. Using octoparse you can scrape data 24×7 either locally or in the cloud-based on your preferences and needs. You can also schedule job scraping tasks periodically. You can apply filters and avail of several other features.

Why Octoparse is the best solution

A one-line answer could be, we take away all your job scraping-related pains and let you focus on growing your business. We do this while maintaining cost-efficiency and job data integrity for your business.

Visit this page to understand in detail why we are best suited for scraping job data.

Octoparse is free for you to start scraping and exporting job data. Try it now.

Demonstrating scraping of Amazon career pages

In this section, we shall scrape amazon jobs for their career pages and export the data into JSON. Then we shall also present you with an XML template that could be used to post data to Job boards etc.,

Steps involved in scraping amazon jobs using octoparse :

Download and install octoparse windows client.
Log in using your octoparse credentials.
Click on “+task” under advanced mode.
In the next screen click on the “batch generate” tab under “input URL“.
I have already found out amazon jobs URL page for you

Page 1: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/job_categories/human-resources?offset=00&result_limit=10&sort=recent

Page 2: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/job_categories/human-resources?offset=10&result_limit=10&sort=recent

Page 3: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/job_categories/human-resources?offset=20&result_limit=10&sort=recent

6. Observe the URLs.

7. Offset increments by 10 for every next page.

8. So, we configure the batch generate page accordingly to paginate URLs

9. Next, we configure the workflow.

Select the Job Title and configure the workflow to loop click on each job title.
Next, Click on the respective fields that you would like to extract and configure the workflow to extract text out of it.
Save the workflow

10. Click on start extraction.

11. When the job data extraction is finished, you are asked to choose the preferred format for exporting the scraped job data.

12. Export the data to your local system or in the cloud. To export in the cloud you would need to upgrade your FREE membership.

XML feed to distribute job posts to job boards like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, indeed

We have sample job data here in JSON format. For visual aesthetic brevity, we have trimmed Description, Eligibility, and Preference.

JSON DATA :

{

“Job_title”: “Manager, DLS”,

“Job_ID”: “Job ID: 1265127 | Amazon.com Services LLC”,

“Description”: “At Amazon, we believe that every day is still day one. We are working to be the most customer-centric…”,

“Eligibility”: “· 5+ years of team lead or supervisory experience, or serving in a team specialist or leadership…”,

“Preference”: “· Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university or equivalent experience· SPHR, PHR, or…”,

“Location”: “US”,

“Department_Text”: “Human Resources”

}

XML is the preferred format to distribute job listings to chosen job boards. Here we have taken XML format for indeed.com to demonstrate the formatting.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>

<publisherurl>https://www.octoparse.io</publisherurl>

<job>

<url>

<![CDATA[https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1265127/manager-dls]]>

</url>

<![CDATA[At Amazon we believe that every day is still day one.We are working to be the most customer-centric…]]>

</description>

</job>

</source>

We can automate the process of creating these XML feeds for job listings and submit them to indeed. We may automate this for all the major job boards out there.

To conclude this article, choosing the right job scraping partner can be very beneficial to your business. It not only helps in making your business agile but also cuts costs and boosts process efficiency. For any clarification and further help, please reach out to us.

Happy Octoparsing!