boring

The idea

Some job posts are a cry for a small tool. “Data entry” plus “construction”, “dispatcher” plus “fleet”. boring runs those queries in a batch so I can skim what companies are hiring for the boring work. The idea behind it was to find job postings for manual work that had keywords of things that were automation friendly, for potential software pitches.

How it works

boring.rb takes a query or a queries.txt file, a location, and a result cap. SerpAPI does the search. Cache files keep me from burning the free tier while I tweak keywords.

Each hit gets a crude automation score. Manual-entry language goes up. Teacher, intern, part-time go down.

def compute_automation_score(job)
  text = [
    job["title"],
    job["company_name"],
    job["description"]
  ].join(" ").downcase

  score = 0
  hits = []
  disqualified = []

  AUTOMATION_KEYWORDS.each do |kw, weight|
    if text.include?(kw)
      score += weight
      hits << kw
    end
  end

  DISQUALIFIERS.each do |kw, penalty|
    if text.include?(kw)
      score += penalty
      disqualified << kw
    end
  end

  { score: score, hits: hits.uniq, disqualified: disqualified.uniq }
end

Current state

Prototype. It lives in a folder named boring, which is accurate. Not a product. A keyword list and a key.