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Show HN: I built a bot to automatically apply to jobs
- nikki-9696 10y agoThe fact that this sort of thing is a thing is very sad. I'm so glad I have a network and have gotten my jobs through word of mouth and in-person introductions.
- ludamad 10y agoIt's made by a bootcamp graduate, not everyone is in such a luxurious position
- robgibbons 10y agoFor every recruiter complaining that this is a spammy spray-and-pray approach, there are a dozen engineers spammed daily on LinkedIn with irrelevant blanket offers. If anything, this little bot is a delightful and humorous response to both recruiter spam and automated resume filters.
- ryandrake 10y agoSounds like a bit of an exaggeration. I'd love to see an actual profile that literally gets spammed daily with "job offers". I might want to borrow a few things from such a profile! I've never once gotten an unsolicited job offer (in other words, reply back and the job is yours, sight unseen) out of the blue on any platform, LinkedIn or otherwise. Maybe the occasional recruiter contact, but come on.
- dimino 10y agoI get emails most days (5 out of 7) from recruiters. They're mostly bots, but if you put your resume on the wrong site, you get on a series of lists, and can't get off of them.
- mundo 10y agoAgreed. I also made the mistake of uploading a resume with a phone number to Dice, and for about a month I was getting at least one cold-call per day.
- justinlardinois 10y ago> I've never once gotten an unsolicited job offer (in other words, reply back and the job is yours, sight unseen) out of the blue No one does. He meant that some people get spammed daily with interview offers, which are no less annoying when the jobs aren't interesting.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago"job offer" is in quotes because it's usually an offer to interview, but it's phrased in extremely glowing letters. (Usually referring to your X years of expertise in a language you've never used that's only been out for X-2 years.)
- walrus01 10y agoHaeeelooo sir, we are to be recruiting for very senior position of Windows NT4 administratrator in Moldova. Compensations is excellent. Pelase to be replying as quickly as possible like and many good feelings shall be had.
- wiseleo 10y agoThat would be a fun role to try to fill. I still support NT in embedded systems. Remembering all the workarounds for ancient UI is fun!
- mundo 10y agoWe have URGENT need for Testing Automations in Hoboken NEW JERSEY! Please respond!
- jmopr 10y agoSo I built this because I'm a recent bootcamp grad & I've found that it's really hard to get my foot in the door. I'd really love feedback on how I can improve this. Here is an example of a page that gets link in my automated cover letter to an employer: http://job-diana.herokuapp.com/users/jobs/07c5807d0d927dcd0980f86024e5208b http://job-diana.herokuapp.com/users/jobs/07c5807d0d927dcd09...
- zzzcpan 10y agoWould be interesting to generate both a cover letter and a CV tailored for each position. Like removing unrelated experience from the CV, etc.
- garysieling 10y agoThe biggest problem I've had with Indeed is a lot of applications disappear quickly. If I were you I would try to reply back quickly if someone contacts you as a result of this bot (once you get a few replies, you could make yourself a script for that part as well). I would also try to make sure you don't needlessly send multiple applications to the same company.
- cylinder 10y agoI am guessing this only works with the "Apply via Indeed" jobs. Yesterday I was applying for jobs and extremely frustrated by how many corporations require you to create an account on their platform and jump through many hoops just to apply for a job. No thanks!
- Animats 10y agoNow that's a job for a bot. By now, someone should have a bot that's smart enough to figure out how to sign up with an arbitrary site. The comment spam crowd seems to have that technology. The next step in automatic job applications is something that customizes your resume, based on what the job ad is asking. There's a startup in this.
- sheraz 10y agoYou're gonna like this: https://github.com/TeamHG-Memex/autologin https://github.com/TeamHG-Memex/autologin This is a spider that can auto-login given a seed url. I wonder how much harder it would be to make this just a sign-up tool as well?
- madelinecameron 10y ago"Alexa, find me a job"
- Decade 10y agoThat's what I really, really hate about Taleo and iCIMS and Silk Road and Jobvite and so on. They allow their customers to customize the application process with arbitrary fields and click-through agreements, so you can't just write a simple shell script to apply to all jobs that use that system. The login is the least part of the process. I heard that comment spam is often farmed to places with low cost of labor, not necessarily automated.
- wiseleo 10y agoAgreed. I might build it at a hackathon. Feed the job description to some random AI API from a sponsor and build a resume with cover letter automatically from relevant experience. I do that anyway with my resumes and cover letters when I occasionally need them.
- jc4p 10y agoWhen I'm reviewing an application, the most important thing to me is the cover letter and the specificity in it. If you don't state why you want to work at the company, how you think you could grow being a part of it, or even mention the company by name explicitly, I ignore the rest of the application. Spray and fire might work if you don't actually care about your job, but this really seems like spam to me.
- parennoob 10y agoDo you also tell your recruiters to look at people individually and customize their introduction emails to the person in question? Most emails I receive from recruiters are extremely templated, and hardly ever mention specific projects or jobs that I might have done. I would feel perfectly comfortable using spray-and-forget with these kinds of companies.
- jc4p 10y agoWhat you describe is one of my biggest annoyances too, and very common with contingency recruiters. Luckily, our internal recruiters are fantastic and a couple have taught themselves how to program to be able to carry on introductory talks better! Stack Overflow Jobs (our job board) also explicitly disallows this sort of behavior. If a first-touch e-mail doesn't list why the person in particular is being contacted, again, I think it's spam.
- jmopr 10y ago@jc4p I put in the cover letter for every job my bot applies for + I send an additional page customized to the job poster, here is an example: http://job-diana.herokuapp.com/users/jobs/07c5807d0d927dcd0980f86024e5208b http://job-diana.herokuapp.com/users/jobs/07c5807d0d927dcd09... And here is the automated cover letter: Dear Hiring Manager, Hello, my name is Juan Ortiz. Nice to meet you! I actually wrote a bot to automatically apply to your job because it looks like it's a #{fit} fit for my skills - my matching algorithm actually said there is #{percent}% chance you'd be interested in interviewing me. You can check out the match profile I created for your job posting here: #{url_for_analysis} I'd really love the opportunity to interview at #{company_name} for the open #{job_title} position. Thanks again. You can reach me at #{phone_number} if you'd like to chat. P.S. if you're interested in how my bot is actually handling applications for me, you can check out the source code that applied on github: #{link_to_github}.
- DeBraid 10y agoThis commit is hilarious. https://github.com/jmopr/job-hunter/commit/e31b36ea21946a2f2af8db9a7cfbb8d26059d8d0 https://github.com/jmopr/job-hunter/commit/e31b36ea21946a2f2...
- powera 10y agoIf I were a hiring manager, I would straight-out reject anybody who was using this, resume and candidate unseen (assuming I found out). If a person applies to 100 jobs at once, it's unlikely they're going to want my position and I'm better off spending my time talking to other people.
- jwise0 10y agoI think I'd take the opposite tack, by the way. I get about a zillion job recruiter e-mails, and the vast majority are mail merge. It's irritating, but not disqualifying, for the recruiter. If we put up with it that direction, why not put up with bulk solicitation the other way?
- noxToken 10y ago>"It's unlikely they're going to want my position" Well you just discounted a potentially great employee. They implemented a solution to help apply for jobs. The application process can be absolutely draining - especially when you're 25 applications deep with zero response. What's the harm in reaching out to the candidate? If they aren't interested, they'll decline the interview.
- deeteecee 10y agoon the contrary, im looking for the jobs but im depleted devoting so much time to a single job application only to realize it might not be looked at. aside from that, a lot of descriptions don't tell me the full story and both parties have to go through the interview process first before they know they've gotten what they want.
- bsmonaco 10y agoThis is awesome, I wonder if and how this could grow to be used by academic institutions to help support their alum to apply to jobs.
- bsmonaco 10y agoThis is awesome, I am curious if iterated how higher institution's career center's could utilize this to help their alum attain jobs.
- ztratar 10y agoThis is the best possible way to burn bridges. The companies that take spammy applications aren't the companies you want to work at.
- rmason 10y agoNow someone needs to do this for dating sites ;<).
- Chris2048 10y ago"You're less interesting in person" ;_;
- jecjec 10y agoNice, what bootcamp did you go to? I went to App Academy and got my current job by building a bot that logs into LinkedIn and applies to jobs.
- jkot 10y agoI guess it works since you made on HN frontpage.
- dlugo06 10y agoDude this is cool but I would actually reduce your use of the word "actually" by like a hundred percent. It actually makes you sound like you either don't know what you're talking about or like you're overcompensating.
- Ravikiran 10y agoWill the recruiter actually take this seriously? From a recruiter standpoint, when someone applies - the applicant is required to understand, interpret and apply accordingly.
- Ravikiran 10y agoWill the recruiter actually take this seriously? From a recruiter standpoint, when someone applies - the applicant is required to understand, interpret and apply accordingly.
- Ravikiran 10y agoWill the recruiter actually take this seriously? From a recruiter standpoint, when someone applies - the applicant is required to understand, interpret and apply accordingly.
- Endy 10y agoAs someone with experience around a recruiter - never put your real phone number or email out on the web. It will be found. Whether it's industrious sales-hungry recruiters or the sourcing agencies full of geeks on Google and Exalead... it will be found.