Job boards and career sites have proliferated across the web, but navigating the sea of job listings can be overwhelming for job seekers. This is where job aggregators come in. A job aggregator is a search engine for jobs, collecting listings from many different sources into a single database that job hunters can easily search.
Building a job aggregator can be a lucrative business opportunity, with top sites like Indeed earning over $1 billion per year in revenue. But in a competitive market, new entrants need to differentiate themselves to attract users and generate profits. In this in-depth guide, we‘ll walk through all the key considerations and steps to build a successful job aggregator.
How Job Aggregators Work
A job aggregator works by crawling and scraping job listings from many different sources across the web. This includes:
- Company career pages
- Staffing agency websites
- Industry-specific job boards
- Classified ads
- Online forums
- Social media posts
Scraping tools automatically extract key details from each job listing like job title, company name, location, job description, qualifications, and how to apply. The scraped data is then cleaned, structured, and stored in the aggregator‘s database.
When a job seeker searches the aggregator, it queries its database and returns relevant listings matching the user‘s search terms and filters. The aggregator essentially becomes a one-stop shop for job postings collated from hundreds or thousands of sources.
Benefits for Employers
For employers, listing jobs on an aggregator provides massive exposure to potential candidates. Even small companies can get their openings in front of job seekers who may have never come across their careers page otherwise. Some aggregators also offer employer branding services like enhanced company profiles, featured listings, and detailed analytics on applicants.
Aggregators are also a competitive intelligence tool for employers to see who else is hiring, for what roles, and in which locations. This market data can inform a company‘s own talent acquisition strategy.
Benefits for Job Seekers
For job seekers, an aggregator saves immense time and effort. Instead of visiting dozens of different job boards, company sites, and agencies, they can search across all those sources in one place. Aggregators often provide additional services like email alerts for new listings matching saved searches, recommended jobs based on profile, application tracking, and resume help.
Some aggregators host user-generated content like company reviews, interview tips, and salary data which job seekers can use to vet potential employers. Advanced aggregators are using AI and matching algorithms to connect job seekers to the most relevant opportunities based on skills and experience.
Job Aggregator Business Models
Job aggregators generate revenue in a variety of ways, including:
Paid job postings: Charging employers to list their jobs or for premium placement in search results. Pricing is often on a per-click or per-applicant basis.
Subscriptions: Recurring fees for employers to post a certain volume of jobs, view resumes, and access other premium features. Job seekers may also pay for subscriptions to unlock full job details, see salary insights, or get their application boosted.
Advertising: Display ads, sponsored company profiles, or featured employer content. Some offer recruiters the ability to target ads to specific candidate demographics.
Lead generation: Aggregators can charge employers for verified candidate leads matching certain criteria, or earn affiliate commissions for referring applicants to job boards and career-related services.
Recruitment services: Some aggregators are expanding into end-to-end recruitment by offering candidate sourcing, screening, and employer branding as a package to clients, moving beyond simply listing jobs.
The optimal monetization model depends on your target audiences and unique value proposition. Many aggregators employ multiple models, such as paid listings alongside advertising. The key is delivering strong ROI to employers while keeping the core job search experience free for job seekers.
Standing Out in a Competitive Market
There are already several large, established job aggregators like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Google for Jobs. To carve out market share, newer entrants need to differentiate on a few key dimensions:
Niche focus: Specialize in a particular industry vertical, role type, or location not well-served by generalist sites. Examples include aggregators for tech startups, remote jobs, or healthcare.
Quality over quantity: Curate listings to only include legitimate, detailed job postings from reputable companies. Eliminate duplicate, expired, or scam listings to build trust with users.
Unique inventory: Crawl industry-specific sites, forums, and other sources that mainstream aggregators overlook. Strike exclusive partnerships with certain job boards for enhanced listings.
Value-added services: Provide career advice content, resume critiques, skill assessments, virtual job fairs and other tools to support job seekers and employers beyond just job postings.
Superior UX: Create highly relevant search results and an intuitive interface that makes it easy to find the right jobs and attract applications. Personalize the experience based on user behaviors.
"In the early days of Indeed, we focused a lot on SEO to make sure our job pages ranked highly. But we also had a maniacal focus on the job seeker experience and constantly worked to deliver the most relevant search results. That organic traffic and repeat usage by satisfied job seekers really fueled our growth."
– Rony Kahan, Indeed co-founder
Technical Considerations
Building a robust job aggregator requires substantial investment in backend engineering for web scraping and data processing. Key components include:
Crawler/scraper: Automated bots to crawl target websites and extract job data. Need to handle a variety of page structures, parse unstructured text, navigate pagination and tackle anti-bot measures. Tools like Scrapy, Octoparse, and Mozenda can help.
Data pipeline: Transform raw HTML from disparate sources into clean, consistently formatted job listings in your database. Deduplicate records, categorize job attributes, and geocode locations. Can use ETL tools, Python scripts, and serverless functions.
Database: Need a scalable database to store, search and serve up millions of job listings. Common choices are MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch or cloud tools like Amazon Aurora and Azure SQL. Must be indexed for fast queries.
APIs: Expose APIs so employers and partners can programmatically post and update job listings in your database in real-time. Also need APIs for internal data transfer between systems.
Frontend: Build an appealing, fast, mobile-friendly website and job search interface. Need advanced search capabilities, filters, tags, and alerts. Can use frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.
Matching engine: More sophisticated aggregators are using AI/ML models to better match job seeker preferences and experience to job requirements for more relevant results and recommendations. Leveraging NLP, collaborative filtering, skills ontologies, and other techniques.
The latest trend is to build job aggregators using microservices architecture, containerization with Kubernetes, and serverless functions to maximize development velocity and efficiently scale different components. Continuous scrapers running on AWS Lambda, for example, can feed listings into a central API.
Ensuring Freshness and Coverage
The value of a job aggregator depends heavily on the freshness, accuracy and comprehensiveness of its listings. This means scraping very frequently to capture new job postings, removing outdated or filled positions, and expanding coverage to more sources.
Some tips and best practices:
- Set scraping frequency based on how often target sites are typically updated (e.g. hourly, daily). Balance data freshness vs. computational cost and politeness to source websites.
- Use AI to predict listing inactive dates based on posting date and employer/industry norms. Can also analyze application link clicks.
- Allow employers to claim their company pages and submit feeds of their latest openings. Supplement with scraped data.
- Continuously monitor site structure changes that could break scrapers. Automate quality checks and alerts.
- Archive inactive listings in separate database for time series analysis and employer research features.
- Partner with ATSes, job boards, and staffing agencies for direct XML feeds to ensure you get their latest postings in real-time.
"In 2017 we were scraping 2 million jobs a week from about 50,000 websites. Data accuracy and freshness was a huge priority and differentiator. We invested heavily in our crawling infrastructure to be able to scrape job listings with minimal lag. We also worked directly with employers and ATSes to ingest listings via APIs in real-time."
– Amit Jain, CareerBuilder CEO
Marketing and Growth
Marketing a job aggregator requires a dual-sided approach to attract both job seekers and employers. Core strategies include:
SEO: Optimize your job listing pages to rank highly on search engines for queries like "software engineer jobs" or "marketing jobs in Chicago." Build links to your category pages.
Paid search marketing: Bid on job-related keywords to drive traffic, focusing on niche terms and long-tail keywords larger aggregators may overlook. Retarget job seekers who abandon applications.
Content marketing: Create guides, industry reports, and career advice content to attract inbound traffic. Encourage organic sharing.
Partnerships: Pursue distribution partnerships, widget integrations, and co-branding with relevant sites like industry blogs, career coaching services, and professional associations.
CRM: Collect job seeker emails for remarketing. Send targeted job alerts and candidate-facing newsletters. Personalize outreach based on behaviors and preferences.
Brand advertising: Build brand awareness and credibility through online and offline ads, press coverage, and thought leadership. Emphasize differentiators.
Social and community: Engage users on social media by sharing jobs and career tips. Build niche talent communities and forums for discussion and peer networking.
On the employer side, focus on targeted outreach to companies actively hiring in your niche. Provide useful industry benchmark data to pique interest. Offer free trials and hands-on assistance to demonstrate ROI. Build case studies and testimonials to establish proof of performance.
Legal Considerations
When building a job aggregator, it‘s critical to be aware of potential legal issues around scraping and reusing job listings. A few key points:
- Check for Terms of Service restrictions on scraping or reproducing job content from source sites. Some explicitly prohibit scrapers.
- Avoid implying partnership or endorsement by employers without consent. Make clear your site is a third-party aggregator.
- Comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other data privacy regulations if you collect user data. Have clear privacy policies.
- Honor copyright and trademark when quoting text or images from job descriptions. Provide attribution and links to original source.
- Avoid scraping user-generated content like resumes or profiles without consent. Do not scrape emails for unsolicited marketing.
Work with legal counsel to review your practices and ensure compliance. Case law around scraping is still evolving, so stay on top of the latest rulings.
Examples to Learn From
Many pioneering job aggregators have grown into huge successes. Study these for inspiration and lessons:
Indeed: Launched in 2004, now the world‘s largest job site with over 250 million monthly visitors. Known for relevant search results and minimalist interface. Makes most revenue from cost-per-click job advertising.
SimplyHired: Early aggregator that innovated with job seeker profile matching, company reviews, and salary data. Acquired by global staffing firm Recruit in 2016.
ZipRecruiter: Focused on SMB employers, using AI technology to match job seeker profiles to listings. Went public in 2021 at a $2.4 billion valuation.
Talent.com: Multilingual aggregator covering 78 countries. White labels its job search technology to publishers and trade associations.
Google for Jobs: Google‘s foray into job listings, indexing job postings across the web and featuring them prominently in search results. Poses a threat to traditional aggregators.
The Future of Job Aggregation
As job boards proliferate and the online talent marketplace evolves, job aggregators must continue to innovate. Key trends to watch:
- Greater personalization of job recommendations based on skills, experience, and behavior. Use of AI matching.
- Shift from manual resume upload/apply to automated profile matching and one-click apply. Integration with ATSes.
- More sophisticated compensation data and tools, such as verified salary ranges and cost-of-living calculators.
- Value-added services like online assessments, video introductions, background checks, and automated scheduling.
- Tighter integration with social networks and professional communities for referrals and networking.
- Focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion features to support underrepresented talent and unbiased hiring.
- Expansion into contract, freelance, and gig work listings as alternative work models grow. Blockchain credentialing.
Job aggregators that can adapt to these trends and leverage cutting-edge technology while staying true to their core value proposition of matching candidates to opportunities will thrive in the years ahead. Though competition is fierce, opportunities abound in this fast-growing space.