OttHtJobs - Procedure Summary

Here is a summary of the procedure followed to produce the Daily New Jobs Email.

If you do decide to create and manage a similar site for a different job category and/or location, then please email OttHtJobs your site information as such information has been requested by many OttHtJobs subscribers.

OttHtJobs uses a Windows-PC based program called WebSite-Watcher. It will store entered links (URLs) and can monitor those sites for changes. It is sophisticated enough to ignore meaningless dynamic changes such as current date/time, and it is sophisticated enough to find pages hidden behind forms (such as career searches).
The changes are highlighted in yellow. This is accomplished by storing snapshots of the previous and current page and producing a "diff".
The program comes with a free 30 day trial, but after that, it will cost you about $30 USD for a licence.
The links of all job sites in Ottawa have been manually entered. Much of the information comes from several directories. Once every couple of months, a new directory version is published, and it is checked to see if yet more companies can be added to the database. Because of the sophistication of this program, it can find jobs that are listed as a result of submitting forms, however this can become tricky. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript (and possibly CGI) is useful.
At the press of one button, the WebSite-Watcher program scans over 2000 career pages in about 20 minutes. It will typically find 150 changed sites if run every day, and 200 sites if run every other day. This part of the process is completely automated, I often let it run while I have breakfast.
Then each of the 150-200 changed pages is manually checked. Although the program can ignore changes such as time and date, still, over half of the career pages that have changed can be completely ignored for a variety of reasons, for example the job is not in Ottawa, or the changes are cosmetic site restructuring. Every time I come across a change that should be ignored and is likely to occur again, I try to update the WebSite-Watcher properties for that site so that such changes are ignored in the future. This takes time.
For each changed page, the relevant Ottawa job links are manually collected via copy and paste into the daily new jobs emails.
The entire manual process typically takes about 2 hours/day (it would be much faster an email did not have to be composed). Sometimes the URLs have to be changed so that they work better for others (such as removing session IDs). Knowing HTML forms, JavaScript and CGI is useful.
The program has nice reporting capabilities so that the complete list of companies can be exported at the touch of another button. This is done once a month.
URLs often go stale as websites are updated. Thus, once a week, all the bad URLs are updated.

Here is a summary of the procedure followed to produce the Daily New Jobs Email.

OttHtJobs uses a Windows-PC based program called WebSite-Watcher. It will store entered links (URLs) and can monitor those sites for changes. It is sophisticated enough to ignore meaningless dynamic changes such as current date/time, and it is sophisticated enough to find pages hidden behind forms (such as career searches).
The changes are highlighted in yellow. This is accomplished by storing snapshots of the previous and current page and producing a "diff".
The program comes with a free 30 day trial, but after that, it will cost you about $30 USD for a licence.
The links of all job sites in Ottawa have been manually entered. Much of the information comes from several directories. Once every couple of months, a new directory version is published, and it is checked to see if yet more companies can be added to the database. Because of the sophistication of this program, it can find jobs that are listed as a result of submitting forms, however this can become tricky. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript (and possibly CGI) is useful.
At the press of one button, the WebSite-Watcher program scans over 2000 career pages in about 20 minutes. It will typically find 150 changed sites if run every day, and 200 sites if run every other day. This part of the process is completely automated, I often let it run while I have breakfast.
Then each of the 150-200 changed pages is manually checked. Although the program can ignore changes such as time and date, still, over half of the career pages that have changed can be completely ignored for a variety of reasons, for example the job is not in Ottawa, or the changes are cosmetic site restructuring. Every time I come across a change that should be ignored and is likely to occur again, I try to update the WebSite-Watcher properties for that site so that such changes are ignored in the future. This takes time.
For each changed page, the relevant Ottawa job links are manually collected via copy and paste into the daily new jobs emails.
The entire manual process typically takes about 2 hours/day (it would be much faster an email did not have to be composed). Sometimes the URLs have to be changed so that they work better for others (such as removing session IDs). Knowing HTML forms, JavaScript and CGI is useful.
The program has nice reporting capabilities so that the complete list of companies can be exported at the touch of another button. This is done once a month.
URLs often go stale as websites are updated. Thus, once a week, all the bad URLs are updated.