How Iowa Workforce Development improved its job banks with screenscraping technology

If I were giving out prizes for workforce development uses of Web 2.0, today's winner would be Iowa Workforce Development. 

A few weeks back I got an email from Todd McGee, a business marketing specialist at IWD. He'd seen my post about creating a Google map of One-Stops in Los Angeles and was writing to tell me about some of the cool things they're doing with Web 2.0 in Iowa. (This is one of the great things about blogging - getting feedback and new ideas from people I've never met.) He told me about a "screenscraping" project in partnership with Iowa employers that automatically generates listings for IWD job banks directly from employer websites. It requires much less work and costs less than their old system. It sounded so interesting, I asked if IWD could write up something I could post to Workforce Developments.

Lori Adams, IWD's field office Bureau Chief, wrote this article, which explains what they're doing, how they developed it, and how both IWD and business benefit. Below is part one. Tomorrow, I'll post part two.

Matching people with jobs.

That's one of the most important things Iowa Workforce Development does for its customers. But how could we get those jobs from employers who still labor under the misconception that IWD is just the "unemployment office," and that the people we serve are all low-skilled?

One answer seemed obvious – increase the number of job seekers who look at IWD as the "employment office," and get more quality jobs from Iowa employers. But how do you do that?

In November 2006, a representative from HNI/Hon Corporation, an office furniture manufacturer based in Muscatine, Iowa, contacted IWD. They wanted to know if we had the technology to pull all their jobs off their corporate website, and post them to IowaJobs.org, our agency’s main job bank.

The answer at that time was no, but staff was curious, and began investigating. Mike Witt, then a Workforce Advisor in the Davenport office, started looking for software that could do what Hon asked, and discovered Screenscraper. Mike was already working with our labor exchange software developer who knew Utah was using this technology. Mike worked with Screenscraper, obtained a trial version of their software, and worked with developers to create a free "script" to scrape Hon’s jobs onto IowaJobs in February 2007.

Hon management was happy, customers had access to more job listings, and IWD began marketing "screenscraping" to employers. With scraping, we are able to post the employer's openings to multiple websites, including IowaJobs, SmartCareerMove, JobCentral, VetCentral, the appropriate regional IWD job bank (we have 15), and the appropriate economic development group's job bank (we have 18 of those as well).

This is accomplished by just the initial posting - the employer doesn't have to do it multiple times, nor the does the employer have to go back and remove the job when filled. Because screenscraping is done several times a week, we can assure employers their most current information is publicized. We also do this at no cost to the employer.

Tomorrow, in part 2, Lori explains how screenscraping led to increases in the number of listings on IWD job pages, and to development of new partnerships with Iowa employers and the state economic development department.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from readers about this. Sound like a good idea? Know of someone who's doing something similar? Have any other good ideas to share?