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Show HN: Wife couldn't find a dev job so I built a tool to automate the search (first2apply.com)

52 points by sebestindragos ↗ HN
Hey everyone,

My wife graduated in 2022 and she was fortunate enough to land an internship at a small startup which then offered her a permanent position. But ever since then she has been trying to find another job as a frontend dev since the current one doesn't offer any growth opportunities. She started looking in 2023 right when the job market started tanking.

She's been at it for months with no success as there are little to no junior roles available and she spent most of her day refreshing linkedin to check for new opportunities.

At the beginning of this year I had this idea that I could automate the job search part for her by web scraping the search results page in linkedin. This way she could focus on work/portfolio projects and check when the tool finds new job opennings.

Long story short, what started as a small script evolved into a full fledged project since I realised this could help other people too.

The app is an electron desktop app which uses the underlying chromium instance to download the HTML of job sites and sends it to a Supabase edge function for parsing. It doesn't search the entire site, just what jobs are shown in the URL you paste into it. As of now it supports more that 10 sources including linkedin, indeed, dice, glassdoor, flexjobs, bestjobs, we work remotely and constantly looking to add more.

58 comments

[ 307 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] thread
ValtteriL
But did she find a new job using this?
sebestindragos
not yet, still little to no new jobs for junior FE devs. But at least she doesn't waste time anymore refreshing linkedin and other job boards
hnenjoyer_93
Not open source and you require a subscription to run a scraper from the user's own device?

Edit: I see that it's free for now but still

sebestindragos
What's wrong with that?
boredemployee
We basically don't know who the author is or what are they intentions, no available info anywhere.
sebestindragos
Fair enough and you see open sourcing the code as the only way? Or any other options?
boredemployee
think about the user experience:

1) they go to your website, you have links to social websites like linkedin.

2) user goes to your linkedin page and there's no single person associated with it.

conclusion: using "internet best practices" it sounds like a scam to me. so in a forum like HN i would expected you could open source it _or_ tell who you are, what data is being sent and collected, etc.

sebestindragos
never thought about it that way. I'm a shy person so don't usually like putting my name out there. Also, personally, I've never cared who's behind a product, if I like it, I'll use it.
pdimitar
Your personal traits do not invalidate the arguments given to you. You have to admit that not putting any identify forward AND not making it open-source is making it hard to discern from scam services whose only goal is to farm people's emails and web visiting preferences.

I'd like to use your thing but you must show a bit more goodwill first.

sebestindragos
Don't get me wrong, but feel free to not use it if that's a MAJOR issue for you. I don't want to make the source code public because it will be a comercial product. As for my personal info, the username I use here is actually my lastname + firstname if you want to dig me up on linkedin. I do not want to put my name on the app, it's just how I am.
pdimitar
I hope you don't get me wrong as well. I and others are pointing out to you that being shy and undercover (so to speak) involuntarily mixes you in with actual shady folk (who keep information vague for darker purposes).

I've bookmarked your project and will keep a look on it. I don't mind paying for convenience if the product works but for now I'll just monitor and see how it develops.

[deleted]
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hnenjoyer_93
Aside from what the sister comment said, the app being closed source means we can't reliably check what it actually does, how it uses the data and whether it will get us IP bans on the job websites. Paying a subscription for using our own computer's resources and network to scrape the sites is just wrong, I wouldn't complain if it was some web service running in a cloud that just sent notifications though
adrianmsmith
> Paying a subscription for using our own computer's resources and network

I agree with the rest of your comment, but not sure this part is accurate. People pay for Microsoft Word or Photoshop etc., and then run them entirely on their own computer using their own computer's resources and network.

hnenjoyer_93
I should have really worded it better connecting that to the above statements. The problem is that in this particular case a cloud solution would be a better choice for this exact task (unlike for Word or Photoshop). Also the author said they might consider that in another comment
sebestindragos
That makes sense in theory, but I'm not sure most people would bother reading the source code. Regarding your IP banning concerns, since the app only scrapes the links you save it's just like you would manually refresh them in Chrome so don't think this would be an issue (no data to back this up tho, other than my own PC which is running the app continuously and has a ton of links saved for testing).

I made it a desktop app to avoid needing to run expensive cloud resources for scraping (which also includes IP proxies to get around bot detection limits). This would have meant a higher cost for the end user, which I absolutely did not want since it's targeting also unemployed people.

A lot of people have had that complaint and I'm considering building a cloud version with a higher price point, but not a priority right now.

derelicta
Very nice, but probably very US-centric aswell, so maybe displaying for what job market it applies might be a good thing :)

But yeah reminds me in about a year I will also have to apply for a new job, and I'm certainly not looking forward to the whole process.

sebestindragos
It wasn't intended to be US-centric, most supported sites are international. We even have support for Naukri which is India only :D

This is the full list of supported sites as of now https://imgur.com/a/hrvek3e

derelicta
Oh thats unexpected good surprise then! Is this list public so that I might take a look and see whenever my "needs" are met?
sebestindragos
it's displayed in the app, when you try to save a new job search we display the full list of supported sites.
redeeman
honest question, but... your wife is a developer, why didnt she make this?
sebestindragos
She’s a junior frontend dev, no backend experience. Also building an electron app has it’s own learning curve, then distributing via app store etc.

The app’s UI is actually built by her. I’m a backend dev so my UI skills suck.

taylodl
Would have been a great learning experience for her and been great to put on a resume and discuss during an interview. Because you made this for your wife, who's a developer, even if only a junior developer, it has a whiff of mansplaining to it, too.
lostemptations5
I guess he could have just thrown her to the sharks instead of supporting her. But you must be right.
taylodl
Since when does a great learning experience equate to thrown her to the sharks? If I'm providing you with a great learning experience, then I'm not throwing you to the sharks. He could have mentored her and start transitioning her away from being a junior developer.

I suppose that's asking for too much.

sebestindragos
Dude, you're kinda rude. You try mentoring a junior FE dev into a full stack dev in 2 months and capable to build an app end-2-end with devops and everything.

We do work together on the app so she's learning stuff.

culopatin
You have a whiff of finding non existent issues in other people’s lives when no one asked for your advice.
latexr
The fact you both made it together using each one’s unique skills to solve a real problem from one of you is a good story. Consider adding that information somewhere on the website. Knowing you’re an indie husband and wife team may make some people more comfortable with the prospect of buying.
sebestindragos
We're both kinda shy and don't usually like putting ourselves out there, but maybe you're right and it could add some personality to the product.
latexr
Don’t add any personal information, you can literally say “husband and wife team” and leave it at that.
justanotherjoe
i find it funny as well. He could have made it easier for her by saying she made this. But i guess it's too dishonest for the hn crowd.
dangus
I think that while this is a decent idea, I would be more interested in tools that already exist that can actually do the physical applications automatically.

An example of this is WonsultingAI’s AutoApplyAI product. Not an endorsement, I’ve never used it, just that I know it exists and what it does.

If I’m going to pay a monthly fee (once your payment processing is ready ) why am I still having to apply manually when competitors will actually submit the applications for me?

sebestindragos
That's something I also want to build in the future, but for now focussing on the discovery part which I think is the bigger pain.
x13
Why does your app want to access my camera? (Using the Windows build)
sebestindragos
definitely should not, can you give me more details? Is it specifically asking for camera access? Not sure how Windows works, I'm on macos
andy800
I built a similar project, for a single industry. Same concept strategically: scraping a bunch of web sites for job listing, aggregating, then providing direct link to the source:

https://www.casinojoblist.com/

sebestindragos
pretty cool, but I think the projects differ a bit in the way they work. Firs 2 Apply only scrapes the list of jobs from the URL that a user saves, so don't have to crawl everything from linkdein.

What did you use to built your scraper? Curious about the tech stack

cushpush
Much gratitude for your application, I have used it so far to apply to an opportunity I would otherwise not have found. Optimistically this will help me get back into a corporate gig using Clojure.
sebestindragos
Hey, that's amazing, thank you so much for sharing. Hope everything goes smoothly with the interview from here on.
pdimitar
Which websites do you use for the tool to scan?
cushpush
Just LinkedIn searches and Indeed.com searches
em-bee
is there a way to get the windows version without going through the microsoft store?

also any chance for a linux version?

sebestindragos
only via microsoft store for now because that was the simplest way to sign the binary and also get auto-updates for the end user.

I'm looking into a linux version, main blocker there is that I can't find an out of the box solution for auto-updates. Hope in 2-3 weeks to figure out something.

mid-kid
If ms store is your solution for windows, then flatpak should be your solution for linux.

...I don't like either :)

sebestindragos
haha, yeah can't say I'm a fan of the MS store either, but it works. for linux I think I'll go with AppImage, that seems to be the best option for electron
sebestindragos
just added a linux build download option on the website. Debian only for now
DecentRecruiter
It's cool, but how can it make money competing with the countless free job search tools?

What's your differentiator?

sebestindragos
Most other job search tools scrape EVERYTHING from the source sites and do the matching on their end which I don't think works great. Especially the scraping part, one can't simply scrape all jobs that exist on linkedin.

So I think this approach will be a lot more accurate in finding jobs. Also have some features planned that should make it stand out, for example de-duplication of jobs posted multiple times in different locations.