Iowa Workforce Development Uses ekiwi's Screen-Scraper to Enhance Job Search
The Iowa agency that helps match potential employees with employers has greatly improved their offering recently by using screen-scraper™ web data extraction technology from ekiwi, LLC.
Provo, UT, October 31, 2008 --(PR.com)-- The Iowa agency that helps match potential employees with employers has greatly improved their offering recently by using web data extraction technology. By using screen-scraping, which involves pulling information off web sites to be used in other contexts, the state of Iowa has significantly increased their job bank by tens of thousands, reduced costs for potential employers, and targeted employment opportunities demanding higher-end salaries.
Through the use of screen-scraper™ (www. screen-scraper. com), Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) extracts jobs from the web sites of 70 different companies, then populate their own database with these jobs. Organizations using Iowa's service include Wells Fargo, John Deere, Google, and the University of Iowa, to name a few. Additionally, employment opportunities scraped from the web sites are cross-posted to a number of other sites, such as IowaJobs, SmartCareerMove, JobCentral, and VetCentral, thereby increasing their exposure. The scraping process runs at least twice a week, which ensures that the information is current.
From the standpoint of employers, very little needs to be done to take advantage of the service. “It's a win-win situation,” said one satisfied employer. “We used to batch our postings every Friday - 10 to 15 jobs - email these to Workforce where their staff would retype all this information into iowajobs.org. Because of size limitations, there was editing required and this time consuming effort inevitably produced occasional errors and posting delays. With 'scraping' our vacancies are now posted twice a week without any effort on our part. As a result, our vacancies display more accurate information and receive more time exposure.” An employer need only post employment opportunities on their own web site, as they normally would, and IWD takes it from there.
Use of screen-scraping technology has also opened new doors to employees demanding higher salaries. Lori Adams, IWD's workforce center administration, Division Administrator, indicated, “Having access to this technology also created a new partnership with the Iowa Department of Economic Development, which had hosted a website for jobs paying at least $30,000 a year – SmartCareerMove.com.” Screen-scraping provided a new tool to target employers that previously were out of reach. “We've been able to lend accounts in the past that we've never had before because of this technology,” said Michael Witt, also from IWD.
To handle the scraping system on the IWD side of the process, the agency employs one full-time IT staff member as well as a full-time and part-time employee to handle quality assurance. The scraping process is largely automated, and jobs are reviewed by a person before they're published to the web sites. Todd McGee, a business marketing specialist at IWD, indicated that screen-scraping “dramatically reduced staff time on job order maintenance, yet is robust enough to service our two large public job boards and 34 regional and niche job boards.”
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About Iowa Workforce Development
Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) will contribute to Iowa's economic growth by providing quality customer-driven services that support prosperity, productivity, health and safety for Iowans. In conjunction with state and local economic development efforts, IWD also assists businesses to fulfill their workforce needs.
About screen-scraper™
Founded in 2002, screen-scraper provides technology and services for web-based data extraction. The Screen-Scraper technology is platform-independent and designed to integrate with virtually any existing IT system.
Through the use of screen-scraper™ (www. screen-scraper. com), Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) extracts jobs from the web sites of 70 different companies, then populate their own database with these jobs. Organizations using Iowa's service include Wells Fargo, John Deere, Google, and the University of Iowa, to name a few. Additionally, employment opportunities scraped from the web sites are cross-posted to a number of other sites, such as IowaJobs, SmartCareerMove, JobCentral, and VetCentral, thereby increasing their exposure. The scraping process runs at least twice a week, which ensures that the information is current.
From the standpoint of employers, very little needs to be done to take advantage of the service. “It's a win-win situation,” said one satisfied employer. “We used to batch our postings every Friday - 10 to 15 jobs - email these to Workforce where their staff would retype all this information into iowajobs.org. Because of size limitations, there was editing required and this time consuming effort inevitably produced occasional errors and posting delays. With 'scraping' our vacancies are now posted twice a week without any effort on our part. As a result, our vacancies display more accurate information and receive more time exposure.” An employer need only post employment opportunities on their own web site, as they normally would, and IWD takes it from there.
Use of screen-scraping technology has also opened new doors to employees demanding higher salaries. Lori Adams, IWD's workforce center administration, Division Administrator, indicated, “Having access to this technology also created a new partnership with the Iowa Department of Economic Development, which had hosted a website for jobs paying at least $30,000 a year – SmartCareerMove.com.” Screen-scraping provided a new tool to target employers that previously were out of reach. “We've been able to lend accounts in the past that we've never had before because of this technology,” said Michael Witt, also from IWD.
To handle the scraping system on the IWD side of the process, the agency employs one full-time IT staff member as well as a full-time and part-time employee to handle quality assurance. The scraping process is largely automated, and jobs are reviewed by a person before they're published to the web sites. Todd McGee, a business marketing specialist at IWD, indicated that screen-scraping “dramatically reduced staff time on job order maintenance, yet is robust enough to service our two large public job boards and 34 regional and niche job boards.”
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About Iowa Workforce Development
Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) will contribute to Iowa's economic growth by providing quality customer-driven services that support prosperity, productivity, health and safety for Iowans. In conjunction with state and local economic development efforts, IWD also assists businesses to fulfill their workforce needs.
About screen-scraper™
Founded in 2002, screen-scraper provides technology and services for web-based data extraction. The Screen-Scraper technology is platform-independent and designed to integrate with virtually any existing IT system.
Contact
ekiwi, LLC
Todd Wilson
800-672-0113
www.screen-scraper.com
Todd Wilson
800-672-0113
www.screen-scraper.com
Contact
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