Project Name : The Hunt

Idea : Geo-Enablement of job hunts and some other Recruitment related HR- Operations.

APIs Used:

· Google Maps API

· Upcoming Events API

· Yahoo Hot Jobs RSS Feeds

1. General

1.1. The Idea

* The idea was to introduce a new dimension to Job Hunting. We figured out, that it would be much more interesting for a job seeker to look at the world’s map, click on a location of his choice, and get the jobs available at that precise point. This guarantees a much better user experience as compared to a generic text based search.

· Also to enhance a recruiter’s experience, we had planned of a feature where in a recruiter can log in and associate recruitment events with a given “point” on the map (or a latitude-longitude intersection). These “geo-tagged” recruitment events on the map of the world would become the meeting place for recruiters and job seekers interested in jobs based in these locations.

· Further, subject to a logged-in job seeker’s willingness, we can ask him to give his contact details like email-address, so that next time when a job-seeker logs-in, he can go to a point on the map and if he gets interested in a company situated at this point we could display the details of all users who are current employees of the company and have visited us and have given us their contact details. This would be a wonderful grapevine to trigger referrals. (had planned to use Flickr API to store “business cards” on Flickr).

· Summarily, we have named the project “Hunt” and not “Job Hunt”, because as a part of our idea we had planned to use the Upcoming API to enable the mash up to hunt for people too. Ie Go to a point on the map of the world and “hunt” for people who have “visited those points in the world”. We can provide features so as to allow users to leave “footsteps” (in terms of messages at that point on the map, describing some experience related to that point on the map of the world). We are sure this brings in a new dimension to Blogging on the whole too.

1.2 The Implementation

Due to time constraints, we have been able to implement only the first point in the above idea ie. You can click on the map of the world and lookup jobs available at that point.

We made use of the Google Maps API to bring in the Maps bit. Now in order to get location specific job feeds, we used the Yahoo Hot Jobs RSS Feeds. When a user would click on a point on the map of the world we use the Google Maps API to retrieve the latitude/longitude for this location. After having obtained this, we use the Upcoming.org Event’s API (metro.getLatLon) to get the details of the Metros

Once we have the nearby metro’s details, we use Yahoo Location Based Hot Job’s RSS feeds, to get the specific feed for that particular point on the world’s map.

1.2. Upgradation Possible

Ofcourse, upgradations possible would include implementing bits and parts of the idea that we have not been able to implement right now due to time constraints. But as for the upgradation to the existing bit, we believe that we can use Google KML API to pinpoint company locations to the extent of the road on which the company is located. We believe this to be the culmination of the current implementation.

1.3. Assumptions and Dependencies

As we depend completely over the Upcoming Metro.getLatLon() API for getting the Metros close to a given latitude longitude intersection we cannot guarantee the availability of job data for each and every point on the wolrd’s map. This is primarily because, we depend tightly over Upcoming’s GIS database.