Web scraping is an increasingly used technique. Among the most sought-after information on the internet is job data. Are you wondering why it is so sought after? What are the ways to obtain it on a large scale in order to take full advantage of it? Find out in this article.
Reasons to scrape job vacancy data
Job vacancy data is certainly valuable. There are several ways to use it. You can feed job aggregation sites with new vacancy data. You can also collect this data for labour market trend analysis.
There is data that provides information on the new market demand. This includes the salary statement. The web scraping data on job vacancies can be used to find out the salary offered by competitors in order to get a head start.
In addition, it allows you to offer your service to specific companies in order to find prospects. It should be noted that some agencies use web scraping to update their job databases. However, it should be noted that it is not always easy to scrap information on job offers.
How do you scrap job advertisement data?
Are you wondering how to do web scraping on websites like Indeed or Linkedin ? There are several options for retrieving job offers from the web.
Using a web scraping service
There are companies on the market that offer "managed services". You can choose providers with a good reputation such as Datahen, Data Hero or Scrapinghub. They will take care of your requests and do what is necessary to satisfy you. They will use IP proxies, servers, scripts and much more.
Scraping services very often charge according to the amount of data to be retrieved, the number of websites to be scraped or the frequency of the retrieval. There are web scraping companies that charge additional fees. These relate to the number of data fields and the storage of the data.
There are other factors that may affect the final price. For example, the complexity of the website. For each scraping job, there is usually a monthly maintenance fee. For example, to extract data on job offers from websites such as Indeed or Linkedin, you need to budget for this.
Going through this solution offers many advantages. You can benefit from a highly customisable service that is well adapted to your needs. In addition, the data is delivered free of charge. On the downside, the cost can be high, especially if you have a lot of sites to scrape.
Using a web scraping tool
For those who know, technology is advancing. It is now possible to automate web scraping. There are several web scraping software packages on the market. They are designed so that people who do not have technical knowledge in the field can recover data from the web.
These web scrapers access the target sites and capture the data. To do this, they decipher the HTML structure of the web page. Most scraping tools are compatible with your system.
It is a solution that offers considerable advantages to all users. Everyone can benefit from it because it is economical. By using Google scraping tools and others, you can pay monthly. There are even free packages that can meet your needs.
In addition, these tools are generally easy to use. You do not need to be an expert to use them. People with little or no technical knowledge can handle them. This is an excellent time-saving solution. Indeed, there are providers who offer crawler configuration services and training sessions.
In addition, web scraping software is powerful. They are suitable for projects of any size. No matter how many websites need to be scraped, they will be of great help. Moreover, they offer a fast turnaround time. It is possible to set up a crawler in 10 minutes.
You can configure crawlers or modify existing ones without the help of the technical team or the service provider. Finally, scraping tools require low maintenance costs.
On the downside, there is the issue of compatibility. All job scraping tools claim to have the ability to cover any website. However, there are sites for which scraping is not possible. Secondly, job scraping tools cannot fully solve the problems caused by Captcha.
Note also that you need time to learn how to use the chosen tool. There are virtual tools such as Octoparse or import.io that are easier to learn.
The internal configuration of web scraping
You have the possibility to set up a team of professional people to do only web scraping of job offers. This gives you complete control over the crawling process. In addition, the turnaround time is faster. There are fewer communication challenges.
However, this solution is expensive. It can also lead to a lack of focus. You will gain by devoting more time and energy to growing your business.
Web scraping is a process that involves a great deal of technical skill, especially if you are scraping the most popular sites. The same applies if you need to extract a large amount of data on a regular basis.
It is then difficult to set up a team for this even if you hire professionals.
In summary, whichever solution you choose for job scraping, you will benefit from both the advantages and disadvantages. The best option should be the one that best meets your specific needs. It should fit your schedule, your budget or your project. Obviously, a solution that works for one company will not necessarily work for another. It is up to you to make the best choice to take full advantage of it.