How to automate your job search and be the first to know about new vacancies

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How not to die behind a screen looking for work? Go about your business and stay informed about new vacancies in real time with our guide.

Looking for a job in newspapers smells like bad manners. No print publication can compete with the World Wide Web in terms of ease of selection and speed of information provision. Often, the employer himself simply ignores the paper, posting vacancies exclusively on his page on the Web or specialized Internet resources. This is the norm of the time. But in search of the job of your dreams, you can spend hours, days, weeks of surveillance on the online banks of job offers.

Want to gain some competitive edge over other job seekers? Be the first to know about a new vacancy! A few minutes of simple setup, and the Internet will give you real-time news about vacant positions that are relevant to you. There is no need to constantly stick in front of the monitor, the work itself will find you.

Of course, no one can guarantee you a warm place just because you were the first to respond to an offer. However, in some situations, the speed of your reaction to the ad will be critical. For example, if the employer is not interested in monthly searches for his ideal employee, but wants to find a suitable person as soon as possible.

The proposed tricks will also be useful to those who are generally satisfied with their work, but do not mind periodically learning about the most "tasty" vacancies without constant monitoring of network resources.

Setting up an RSS news feed

I will not go deep into the descriptive part of RSS, because most of Lifehacker's readers are very familiar with this technology. Just to mention that the three-letter abbreviation hides the convenience of reading news from any sites you like.

Which RSS reader should you choose? (can be skipped)

I prefer Feedly. The reader has an excellent design in all its guises: Web, iOS, Android. I have no complaints about the stability of the work. But whichever RSS client you choose, the principle will be the same.

Choosing a database of vacancies

There is no need to discover America: apparently, it is simply not better to find hh.ru/by/kz in the post-Soviet expanses. This job bank is very popular with both job seekers and their potential employers. This is what I will take as an example, although you can use any other resource.

We set the necessary parameters in the advanced search option: region, vacancy, proximity to the metro, desired wage level, work experience, type of employment, and further down the list. You are free not to fill out all the proposed points, but the more accurately you describe your dream job, the less trash you will see later. Press the button "Find".

Note the subtle icon associated with RSS technology on the Internet. We click on it and copy the address of the opened window. It is this link that we need to further automate the job search.

We go through all vacancy databases and do the same. We save all received links to RSS feeds in a secluded place.

If you are interested in employment in any particular company, take under the gun its page with the section "Vacancies". But how? After all, there is most likely no RSS button! Support resources come to the rescue, for example. The service can create RSS feeds from any web page.

Just paste the link to the job page and the RSS feed is ready.

Copy the link generated by the service or simply send it straight to Feedly if you are using this particular RSS reader.

Working with RSS (you can skip it)

It's time to create a separate feed in the RSS client, into which we will dump all the previously collected RSS links. As a result, the feed will be instantly replenished with only those entries that will 100% meet the criteria you set on the job search site. For example, my vacancy announcements began to fall into the feed called HeadHunter.

We do the same with the links created by Page2RSS. Unless, of course, you have launched them into the reader directly from the service.

Respite

What do we have at this intermediate stage?

If you have not contacted an RSS reader, then you have a scattering (or just one) of links to RSS feeds.

If you threw everything into an RSS reader, then instead of manually updating dozens of sites, we get an automatic subscription on one page. Already not bad, but it also needs to be monitored. This option does not always suit us.

How to be? In both the first and second case, it is worth spending another 10 minutes to create a recipe in the wonderful web-based tool IFTTT!

Setting up SMS notifications on IFTTT

The life hacker regularly introduces his readers to those excellent IFTTT recipes that make life easier for all Internet residents over and over again. It's time to get acquainted with another one. IFTTT can send SMS messages to the user's mobile phone with each new entry from a specific RSS feed! Bravo!

I'm not sure if IFTTT works with all operators and countries of residence of Lifehacker readers. Request: let me know in the comments about those countries and mobile operators that have established bridges with IFTTT. My home country, Belarus, works with IFTTT at least with an MTS operator.

It's time to create recipes using RSS links. At the same time, do not forget that when connecting an SMS channel, you must add two zeros before the international code of your country.

It remains to wait for the tremulous vibration of the phone. And here she is!

I want to focus on two nuances. The first is that the Cyrillic alphabet in messages is displayed in gibberish. But this is no problem - workers come to the links.

The second is related to the IFTTT restrictions on the number of messages sent to the user. The limit is ten. And this is logical, because it is financially costly for a company to send hundreds and thousands of SMS to only one addressee. Therefore, you should initially take a responsible approach to the filters of offers on job search sites in order to narrow the selection as much as possible and receive only the most interesting ads.

Setting up email campaigns

All the same IFTTT will easily send you a message to the specified email address if a new entry appears in the RSS feed. The recipe is created by analogy with SMS.

Conclusion

Hassle-free job search on the Web is based on two pillars - RSS and IFTTT technologies. It is enough to spend several tens of minutes on setting, and you will not have to rest your eyes on the pixels of the screen for hours. Looking for a specific job with strong demands on your part? Set up rare SMS notifications. Are you ready to get involved in various areas? Receive tons of fresh vacancies by email.

In the event that your mobile phone does not have access to the Internet or is too old, send the news feed to an RSS reader. This creature will make life easier for you and the F5 button.

How do you find a new job? Share your experience in the comments.