Job Search Tips

picture-15The two sites that were invaluable to me while hunting for jobs were Indeed.com and Yahoo Pipes

Indeed.com is a search enginge for jobs – it pulls in all the listing from places like Monster, Dice, and a large number of company websites. Although it provides a search feature, it wasn’t quite customizable enough for my needs. To get around this, I used Yahoo Pipes to filter the results from the RSS feed. This allowed me to extract the exact job matches that I wanted. In addition, it allowed me to combine results from other job search sites that might not be included from Indeed, like Educase.edu.

I’ve published the Yahoo Pipe that I used. By clicking that link, you will be able to enter the search terms you want to find (along with search terms to block, along with ways to filter by state). Once you have run the filter, you can subscribe to it in a RSS reader (Google Readeris my recommendation). To get the RSS feed of the results, simply click the link that says “Get as RSS” (you may right click the link, click on “Copy Link Location”, and paste that into a Desktop RSS client as well). You will now have highly targeted job listings delivered to you as they are posting! In addition, you can click “More Options” and choose to get them delivered to your Email as well.

Advanced Usage – Adding additional jobs to block
The Pipe allows you to block certain key words, and filter by state. When you first create your search, you might not know what words to block. However, after the results have come in a few time, I’m sure that certain jobs will jump out that you know you don’t want to see anymore (“Clerk” kept jumping out at me). To filter this out, you must re-enter the fields into the pipe, and add the additional term to block. You must then run the pipe again, and add the newly create RSS feed (get the link again) to your reader, and unsubscribe from the old one. There is a way around this though…..

To prevent from having to do this every time, clone the Pipe. Once you have cloned it and have the version, Edit the source. There are 6 different user input fields. Change the default and debug options to be whatever you want them to be. Save the pipe, and run it (*Do not change the defaults, only change them in your cloned edit source). Subscribe to the new RSS feed. Now, when you find a new term to block, you may simply open your Pipe, and add the new phrase to the appropriate Debug and Default statements. This will automatically be picked up in your RSS feed, and you don’t have to re-subscribe! Hope that helps…


The below instructions are for my original version of the feed. It has since been updated to be much more user friendly. Do not follow the below steps, it is kept for archival purposes, use the instructions above instead

I’ve created a sample Pipe – you can check it out here.  Feel free to clone it, and modify it to suit your exact needs.   For an explanation of what some of the steps are or for more details, read the detailed instructions below on how to create your own step by step.

  1. Open Indeed.com
  2. Start by entering in key words that you are interested in into the search box on indeed.com. For the purposes of this example, lets go with “Digital Forensics”. We’ll leave off additional filtering, and location as well. Notice under the search box, and before the results, is a line that says “Save this search as an email job alert or RSS feed”. You will need the link for the RSS feed momentarily
  3. Open Yahoo Pipes. After logging in, hit “Create Pipe”. Select the “Fetch Feed” widget and drag it to your workspace.
  4. Go back to Indeed and get the link for the RSS feed (remember? We just discussed this a second ago). Paste it into the text box in the “Fetch Feed” widget.
  5. Due to the fact Indeed will be aggregating results, and possibly on multiple keywords, there will be duplicate results. We don’t really want this. So we’re now going to get rid of some of the duplicate job listings.
  6. Click the operators tab and pull the “Split” operator onto the workspace.
  7. Connect the output from the “Fetch Feed” widget to the input for the “Split” widget
  8. Pull two “Unique” widgets onto the workspace
  9. Connect one output from the “Split” widget to the input from the first “Unique” widget (doesn’t matter which one), and connect the other output from the “Split” widget to the input of the other “Unique” widget
  10. Set the “Filter non-unique items based on” field for one of the “Unique” widgets to be item.title, and the same field in the other “Unique” widget to be item.pubDate
  11. Pull a “Union” widget into the workspace
  12. Connect the output of the first “Unique” widget to one of the inputs of the “Union” widget, and then connect the output of the other “Unique” widget to another input of the “Union” widget
  13. Drag a new “Unique” widget to the workspace
  14. Set the “Filter non-unique items based on” field to item.link
  15. Connect the output of the “Union” widget to input of the Unique widget.
  16. All the duplicates should now have been removed (we hope!)  However, we can customize our feed further.
  17. Pull a “Filter” widget to the workspace
  18. Connect the output of the “Unique” widget to the input of the “Filter” widget
  19. Make sure the “Filter” widget is set with the options “Block” and “Any”
  20. This step has been added after getting results for a while. For example, I know I don’t want a sales job. Set the one rule that is already displayed and blank so that item.title Contains Sales. This will make it so any job posting that has “Sales” in the title does not get returned. Let’s add one more rule. Add a new Filter Rule (click the + sign by Rules in the “Filter” widget). Set this one so that we don’t have to do technical support…so set it so that item.Title contains Help Desk
  21. Now we have some relevant searches coming back, but we don’t really want to move to Alaska to work, do we? Let’s fix that.
  22. Drag a new “Filter” widget to the workspace. Change the settings to “Permit” and “Any”
  23. Drag the output of our previous Filter to the input of the new Filter
  24. In the existing rule, set it to item.title Contains “, GA” (you don’t need to put the quotes around it)
  25. Add 2 new rules, set these to be item.title Contains “, AL” and item.title Contains “, TN”
  26. This will make it so that we are now only shown jobs that are listed for the states of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama (This rule works because Indeed returns the title in the format “JOB TITLE, STATE_ABBREV”
  27. If you’re currently in school, your school probably has a job listing site that doesn’t necessarily get indexed by Indeed. Let’s search that to.
  28. Drag a new “Fetch Feed” widget to the workspace.
  29. Visit your school’s job search site, and find the appropriate RSS feed for your school’s search (sorry, can’t help you here, too many job sites!) For purposes of this example, we’ll add the RSS search for jobs from Educase – http://www.educause.edu/search/rss.asp?Title=Job
  30. Depending on how advanced the RSS feed is, you might have to filter on keywords. Drag a new Filter widget to the workspace.
  31. Connect the output from the Fetch Feed widget to the input on the Filter widget
  32. Set the options on the Filter widget to be “Permit” and “Any”
  33. Since we’re looking for Digital Forensics jobs, set the rule to be item.title Contains Digital Forensics
  34. We now need to combine the jobs from both listings
  35. Drag a new “Union” widget to the workspace
  36. Connect the output from the Filter we just created to one of the inputs of the “Union” widget
  37. Connect the output from the Filter in step 19 to another input of the “Union” widget
  38. We now have results from both sources, but they are likely out of order. Drag a new “Sort” widget to the workspace
  39. Connect the output of the Union widget to the input of the Sort widget
  40. Set the options on the sort widget to sort by item.pubDate in Descending order
  41. Connect the output of the Sort widget to the input of the “Pipe Output”

You now have a pipe that lists you jobs from two different job sources, filters them out, only displays the ones in the states you care about, and provides an RSS feed for you. Now you can just subscribe to the Yahoo Pipes feed in your favorite feed reader (Google Reader is my reader of choice) and watch as job listings that are relevant to you come streaming in!

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