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HN Who is Hiring Scrape

This workflow automates the extraction of job postings from the "Who is hiring?" section on Hacker News. It precisely locates relevant posts using the Algolia Search API and retrieves detailed content through the official Hacker News API. The raw text is intelligently parsed using the OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model to generate structured job data, which is then stored in Airtable for easy management. This process significantly improves the efficiency of obtaining job information and addresses the issues of data fragmentation and inconsistent formatting, making it suitable for technical recruiters and data analysts.

Workflow Diagram
HN Who is Hiring Scrape Workflow diagram

Workflow Name

HN Who is Hiring Scrape

Key Features and Highlights

This workflow automatically scrapes recruitment information from the monthly "Who is hiring?" posts on Hacker News (HN). It leverages the Algolia Search API to accurately locate relevant posts, calls the official Hacker News API to retrieve posts and their replies, and employs the OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model to intelligently parse the raw text data into a unified structured recruitment dataset. Finally, the processed job information is automatically written into an Airtable database for easy management and subsequent use.

Core Problems Addressed

Manually searching and organizing recruitment information on Hacker News is time-consuming and cumbersome, with inconsistent raw data formats that are difficult to utilize directly. This workflow significantly improves data acquisition efficiency through automated scraping, text cleaning, and intelligent structuring, effectively solving issues related to data dispersion, format inconsistency, and difficulty in analysis.

Use Cases

  • Monitoring and aggregating recruitment information within technical communities
  • Automated collection and management of recruitment data
  • Enabling HR professionals or recruitment platforms to quickly access the latest technical job postings
  • Preparing structured data for recruitment trend analysis by data analysts
  • Allowing developers to stay updated on hiring trends in the tech industry in real time

Main Workflow Steps

  1. Manually trigger the workflow start
  2. Use the Algolia API to search for “Ask HN: Who is hiring?” related posts
  3. Parse the search results and extract basic information of each post
  4. Filter posts from the last 30 days
  5. Call the official HN API to retrieve the main post and all replies (job details)
  6. Extract and clean job text content by removing HTML tags and special characters
  7. Use the OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model to convert the cleaned text into structured JSON data (including fields such as company, position, location, job type, salary, description, application link, etc.)
  8. Write the structured data into an Airtable base for easy viewing and management

Involved Systems and Services

  • Algolia Search API (hn.algolia.com) for precise searching of recruitment-related posts
  • Hacker News Official API for retrieving detailed content of posts and comments
  • OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model for natural language processing and structured data generation
  • Airtable as the data storage and management platform
  • n8n Automation Platform as the execution environment for the entire workflow

Target Users and Value

  • Technical recruiters and HR professionals, facilitating quick aggregation and management of tech recruitment information
  • Recruitment platform operators, enriching data sources and automating information updates
  • Data analysts and product managers, obtaining structured recruitment data for trend analysis and decision support
  • Developers and job seekers, staying informed about the latest hiring trends in the tech industry in real time
  • Automation enthusiasts, learning and referencing integrated API and AI model-based data processing solutions

By integrating multiple APIs and intelligent models, this workflow significantly simplifies the process of acquiring recruitment information from the Hacker News community. It achieves a fully automated closed loop of data scraping, cleaning, intelligent parsing, and structured storage, providing an efficient solution for automated processing of technical recruitment data.