Startup Hiring Signals & Linkedin Finder

Automatically extract real-time hiring status, careers page links, company LinkedIn URLs, and founder profile links from any list of startup websites. Export clean data, run the scraper via API, schedule recurring checks, or stream leads directly into your CRM.

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🚀 How to Enrich Startup Hiring Signals in 5 Steps

1. Create a free Apify account.
2. Open Startup Hiring Signals & Founder Contact Finder in the Apify Console.
3. Configure your Input: Paste a list of startup website URLs into startUrls and set your maximum crawl budget.
4. Click "Start" to launch the high-speed Cheerio extraction engine.
5. Download your enriched contacts in JSON, CSV, or Excel, or connect via API/MCP Server.

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🌟 Key Features & Advantages

• 🎯 Hiring Intent Detection: Analyzes homepage content and detects active careers links (/careers, /jobs, /join-us) to determine live hiring activity.
• 👤 Founder & Team LinkedIn Extraction: Automatically discovers personal LinkedIn profile URLs (linkedin.com/in/) linked across startup pages.
• 🏢 Verified Company Metadata: Grabs official company LinkedIn URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions for clean firmographic enrichment.
• ⚡ High-Speed Cheerio Engine: Bypasses heavy headless browsers to extract data up to 10x faster with minimal compute unit (CU) costs.
• 🛡️ Anti-Blocking Support: Integrates seamlessly with Apify Proxy to prevent IP bans and rate limits.

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💼 Actionable Use Cases & Recipes

🎯 B2B Outbound & SDR Sales Triggers

• Goal: Reach out to startups expanding their teams when buying intent and budget availability are highest.
• Recipe: Take a list of target domains, run this Actor to identify hiringStatus: "Active", and route founder LinkedIn profiles directly to your outbound sequences.

👥 Executive Search & Tech Recruitment

• Goal: Detect fast-growing startups before jobs hit major saturated aggregators.
• Recipe: Run scheduled weekly crawls on niche startup portfolio lists to track when companies spin up dedicated career portals.

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💰 Pricing & Plan Capacity

This Actor operates on a transparent Pay Per Event (PPE) pricing model. You are only charged for successfully returned records ($10.00 / 1,000 results).

Plan Tier	Estimated Cost / 1,000 Results	Monthly Volume Capacity
Free Plan	$10.00	~500 startups / month
Starter Plan	$9.00 (10% disc.)	~5,500 startups / month
Scale Plan	$8.00 (20% disc.)	~62,500 startups / month

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⬇️ Input Configuration

Configure inputs via the Apify Console UI or pass a JSON payload:

Input JSON Example

{ "startUrls": [ { "url": "https://openai.com" }, { "url": "https://anthropic.com" }, { "url": "https://apify.com" } ], "maxRequestsPerCrawl": 50, "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true } }

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	Array	(Required)	List of target startup website URLs to analyze.
maxRequestsPerCrawl	Integer	50	Maximum number of page requests allowed across all target domains.
proxyConfiguration	Object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy configuration to bypass IP rate limits.

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⬆️ Output Data Schema

Scraped results are pushed directly to your dataset in JSON, CSV, or Excel formats.

Sample Output Object (JSON)

{
  "website": "[https://openai.com](https://openai.com)",
  "siteTitle": "OpenAI",
  "sourceDescription": "OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company.",
  "hiringStatus": "Active",
  "careersUrl": "[https://openai.com/careers](https://openai.com/careers)",
  "linkedInCompanyUrl": "[https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai)",
  "founderLinkedInUrls": [
    "[https://www.linkedin.com/in/samaltman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/samaltman)",
    "[https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbrockman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbrockman)"
  ],
  "timestamp": "2026-08-17T13:48:22.307Z"
}

Diagnostic Error Output Schema

If a domain is unreachable or blocked, an error record is added so your downstream workflow never breaks silently:

{
  "website": "[https://unreachable-startup-domain.com](https://unreachable-startup-domain.com)",
  "error": "Failed to fetch domain or blocked by target anti-bot system.",
  "errorCode": "REQUEST_FAILED",
  "timestamp": "2026-08-17T13:48:22.307Z"
}

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🤖 MCP Server & AI Agent Integration

Connect this Actor to AI Agents and LLMs (Claude Desktop, Cursor, LibreChat) using the Apify MCP Server:

1. Start an SSE session with Apify's MCP endpoint (https://mcp.apify.com).
2. Pass complex_intricate_networks/founder-contact-enricher-hiring-signals to enrich domains and evaluate hiring signals dynamically inside LLM prompts.

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💻 Programmatic API Access (SDKs)

Run this Actor programmatically using Python or JavaScript:

Python Client (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("complex_intricate_networks/founder-contact-enricher-hiring-signals").call(
    run_input={
        "startUrls": [
            {"url": "[https://openai.com](https://openai.com)"},
            {"url": "[https://anthropic.com](https://anthropic.com)"}
        ],
        "maxRequestsPerCrawl": 20
    }
)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"{item.get('website')} | Hiring: {item.get('hiringStatus')} | LinkedIn: {item.get('linkedInCompanyUrl')}")

JavaScript Client (apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('complex_intricate_networks/founder-contact-enricher-hiring-signals').call({
    startUrls: [
        { url: '[https://openai.com](https://openai.com)' },
        { url: '[https://anthropic.com](https://anthropic.com)' }
    ],
    maxRequestsPerCrawl: 20,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.log(`${item.website} | Hiring: ${item.hiringStatus} \vert{} Careers:${item.careersUrl}`);
});

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🔄 Expand Your B2B Intelligence Pipeline

Enrich your lead flow by pairing this tool with our complementary scrapers:

• Startup Fundraising Scraper: Discover newly funded companies across TechCrunch, Crunchbase, and FinSMEs.
• Company Signal - AI Company Research: Deep-dive into company firmographics, tech stacks, and web traffic.
• LinkedIn 24h Jobs Scraper: Track live job postings published within the last 24 hours.

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❓ FAQ

How does the Actor determine hiring status?
It inspects page anchors for career keywords (/careers, /jobs, /openings), scans page copy for explicit hiring phrases ("we're hiring", "open positions"), and extracts active careers portal links.

Why does this Actor use Cheerio instead of Playwright/Puppeteer?
Most corporate websites expose their header/footer navigation links and meta tags directly in static HTML. Cheerio processes these pages in milliseconds without launching full browser instances, cutting runtime compute costs by over 80%.

Can I run this on a recurring schedule?
Yes. Use Apify Schedules to rerun your target domain lists automatically and receive fresh webhook notifications whenever a startup changes its hiring status to "Active".

Is scraping public corporate data legal?
Yes. This Actor only extracts publicly disclosed information (meta titles, public navigation links, and company LinkedIn URLs) in compliance with international public web data access standards.