The Future of Job Hunting: Leveraging APIs for Smarter Searches
I’m old enough to remember when Bill Warren launched Online Career Center–the first job listing board.
At the time, the concept of an online job board was revolutionary and allowed people to find high-level jobs without having to scour newspaper print ads or walk into companies to drop off their resumes.
Yes, directly handing off resumes to secretaries (not even to HR) was something people used to do!
Since then, the number of job boards has grown exponentially. There are job aggregators, niche boards, and even hyper-niche boards. Social media and networking sites have gotten on board and also offer job listings as a feature.
While the rise of job boards makes it possible to find jobs perfectly suited for your skillset, it also creates a huge challenge: job searching is time-consuming.
Job Searching Has Become Miserable in 2024
As if looking for employment wasn’t emotionally draining enough, the process has become absolutely miserable–and the economy isn’t the problem.
Job searchers now spend an average of five to six months looking for a job before finding employment. During this time, they often spend the equivalent of a full-time job just checking job boards and reading application requirements.
The fact that there are so many different job boards to check just makes it more complicated.
Each job board has its own requirements, and often requires a lengthy signup process, and applicants often check boards multiple times per day. It’s frustrating and anxiety-inducing to have to jump from site to site, combing the latest listings.
To make matters worse, there has been a rise in scam listings on job boards. Even when the job isn’t an outright scam, some companies post job listings that they never intend to fill for reasons such as it makes it look like their company is doing well if they are “hiring.”
However, the process is about to get better thanks to APIs.
What Are APIs?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. Think of APIs like a bridge that allows different software applications to talk to each other and share information.
Much like how a waiter in a restaurant takes your order data request and brings it to the kitchen, an API takes your request and delivers the data back to you.
If you aren’t a tech person, you might not realize how often you interact with APIs on an everyday basis.
Here are some examples of APIs in action:
- Social media sharing: When you hit the “share” button on a website, the share button often uses an API to create the post.
- Weather forecasts: The weather app on your phone uses APIs from services like Weather.com and OpenWeatherMap to give you info.
- Maps: The maps you see on location searches, such as on a realtor website showing available listings, are brought by APIs.
- Online payments: Payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal use APIs to process transactions and handle customer info.
How APIs Can Help Job Searches
APIs can be programmed to do all the onerous work of job searching for you. Here is what it would look like:
You log in to the API service and input your job preferences. The API then scrapes data from multiple job boards and other websites, and delivers the results back to you.
While this seems relatively simple, it has the potential to revolutionize the job search process in these ways.
Saves Time in the Job Search
Reading job and application requirements is incredibly time-consuming. Many job boards try to make this easier with filters, but that doesn’t solve the problem of searchers having to check multiple job boards.
With APIs, the process is much faster because the API checks all the job boards for you. It also allows you to filter results based on detailed preferences, including those that traditional filters don’t allow, such as:
- Job titles
- Industries
- Remote or in-office
- Required skills
- Salary
- Company size
Because job APIs do so much of the search work for you, it can drastically cut down on time it takes to get a job.
Later down the line, we might be able to personalize job searches to an insane level, such as using the API to analyze a company’s website and social media pages to determine if it’s the right work culture for us.
Find “Hidden” Listings
In addition to scraping data from popular job boards, APIs could also pull info from places like company websites and hyper-niche job sites. These are listings that often are overlooked since searchers simply don’t know about them or have time to seek them out.
Less Competition
At large job aggregators like Indeed, job listings have an average of 100 to 200 applicants. Bear in mind that this is the average. For entry-level and mid-level jobs, there can be thousands of applicants.
Even if your resume meets all the requirements, it is hard to make it stand out amongst the competition.
By contrast, the “hidden” jobs on hyper-niche and company websites have much fewer applicants. There’s less competition and a higher chance of your application getting noticed.
Get Application in Earlier
Yes, the early bird really does get the worm with job searching. This is the case with most small-to-medium enterprises who are hiring, at least, because most of them need to hire urgently.
SMEs are also less likely to use AI to review resumes. That means there is an actual human who is reading through the dozens (if not hundreds!) of job applications that come in within the first day or two. They understandably get fatigued as the hiring process drags on, so are more likely to remember, and ultimately hire, early applicants.
APIs can help job searchers get their application in earlier by sending real-time updates about new job listings. For example, this Indeed Job API gives real-time info, meaning you can be one of the first to apply.
Salary Benchmarking
One of the most dreaded parts of the job search process is the “desired salary” question. Data shows that many people–particularly women and minorities–often lowball their salary request.
API can help with this by scraping salary info for the role from various job boards. A web scraping API can streamline the process by automating the extraction of relevant data, saving time and ensuring accuracy.
Once you know, for example, that the average salary for your role is $100,000, you will be more likely to write the appropriate desired salary.
Job Market Insights
Expect to see job search tools that use APIs to provide real-time insights into job markets. For example, the API could provide info on:
- Hiring trends
- In-demand skills
- Salaries for the role in different geographical locations
- DEI initiatives in companies
With this money, you could make smarter decisions about which job to pursue, whether relocating makes sense, which skills to highlight on your resume, and much more.
AI and APIs Will Improve Job Search Even More
AI is already changing the way we do job searches. It can analyze resumes and write cover letters.
However, while the technology isn’t quite there yet, the combination of APIs and AI could completely change the way we apply for jobs. Here’s how.
Optimizing Applications
You probably already have several versions of your resume. Imagine if an API could scrape data about a job, and then AI automatically determines which version of your resume to send, and even suggest improvements, so your resume matches the job in question. It would streamline the job application process to an insane level.
Personalized Job Suggestions
Thanks to AI and APIs, we will also likely see job suggestions that are so highly personalized it is uncanny. You could use an API to search for a job, and then AI would remember which jobs we actually applied to and suggest more like this.
Automating the Application Processes
Many job boards already have APIs that can scrape info from a Word document or PDF version of your resume and put it into their platform.
However, the combination of AI and APIs will just improve this process. You could even use your customized API settings to get notifications on whether your application was viewed or whether the position was filled.
Problems with APIs for Job Search
One of the main problems with using APIs for job search now is that many job boards prohibit data scraping. The API tools have methods to get around these blocks, but it can result in inaccurate data and errors.
In the future, APIs will likely need to develop relationships with the job boards they want to scrape to prevent these errors and stay in legal compliance.
Wrapping Up
While not everyone is thrilled about how technology is being used in the job search process, APIs have the potential to improve the process immensely–and they are only going to get smarter and better as the technology evolves.
If you aren’t using APIs for your job hunt, you risk losing time, opportunities, and compensation.
In the end, embracing these technological advancements means more than just finding a job; it means finding the right job for you. Now is the time to adapt if you want to get ahead.