Hiring Signal Detector

Drop in a list of company URLs. Get back: ATS provider, open role count, hiring departments, tech stack signals from job descriptions, and a hiring velocity rating (very_high / high / moderate / low / minimal).

Active hiring is the #1 budget signal in B2B sales. Know which companies are scaling before your competitors do.

What this solves

Most SDR teams waste 70% of their time on the wrong accounts. Companies that aren't actively hiring have already frozen headcount, which means frozen budgets. Companies that are hiring aggressively are spending money and need tools to support their growth.

This actor tells you, per URL in your TAM list, exactly how aggressively a company is hiring, what departments are expanding, what tools are in their tech stack, and who the budget decision makers are.

What you get per URL

{
  "input_url": "https://www.notion.so",
  "company_name": "Notion",
  "mode": "ai",
  "careers_url": "https://www.notion.so/careers",
  "ats_provider": "Ashby",
  "open_roles_count": 399,
  "top_titles": ["Staff Backend Engineer, Search", "Senior Product Manager, AI"],
  "departments_hiring": { "Engineering": 11, "Sales": 4, "Product": 3 },
  "top_department": "Engineering",
  "hiring_velocity": "very_high",
  "growth_signal": "product_engineering_build",
  "ai_insights": {
    "company_stage": "growth",
    "growth_thesis": "Investing heavily in AI product surfaces and enterprise-scale infra.",
    "tech_stack_signals": [
      { "tool": "TypeScript", "evidence_quote": "TypeScript across the stack", "confidence": "high" },
      { "tool": "Snowflake", "evidence_quote": "Build production data pipelines in Snowflake", "confidence": "high" }
    ],
    "decision_maker_signals": [
      { "role": "VP Engineering", "buying_authority_for": "developer tooling, security, observability" },
      { "role": "Head of Sales Ops", "buying_authority_for": "CRM, sales engagement, BI tools" }
    ],
    "best_sales_pitch_angle": "Heavy hiring in distributed systems + AI signals near-term need for observability and embedding infrastructure.",
    "urgency_signal": "rapid",
    "estimated_headcount": "~700"
  }
}

Modes

Preview (free)

1 URL only, no charge. Use to test output format and verify actor runs correctly on your input format.

Regex ($0.10 per result, recommended for bulk)

• Discovers careers page via 12 common paths and linked-anchor detection from homepage
• Detects ATS from 15 providers (Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, Recruitee, Personio, BambooHR, JazzHR, Teamtailor, Pinpoint, Rippling, Workday, iCIMS, Taleo)
• Counts open roles using ATS-specific and generic selectors
• Extracts and filters role titles (filters out navigation links and region anchors)
• Buckets titles into departments (Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Product, Customer Success, Operations, Design, Data)
• Computes hiring velocity and growth signal from role count and department mix

Honest limitation: Role count is reliable across all ATS-embedded sites and most SSR sites. Title extraction is less reliable for SPA-heavy sites (Notion, Stripe, Atlassian) that load roles client-side after React hydration. For those sites, role count still works; use AI mode for richer inference.

AI-enhanced ($0.40 per result)

Runs the regex pass first, then Claude AI reads the careers page and up to 3 linked JDs to extract:

• Tech stack signals with evidence quotes
• Decision maker titles and buying authority
• Growth thesis and stage assessment
• Best sales pitch angle

Use AI mode for high-priority accounts where the extra context is worth the cost.

Input format

{
  "urls": ["https://stripe.com", "https://notion.so"],
  "mode": "regex"
}

• urls: array of company URLs (homepage or any company-domain URL)
• mode: "preview" | "regex" | "ai" (default: "regex")

Who uses this

• SDRs and AEs targeting expanding companies from a TAM list
• Recruiters finding high-growth companies that need their services
• VCs tracking portfolio headcount velocity
• Competitive intelligence teams monitoring who a competitor is hiring

FAQ

Q: What if a company uses a custom ATS not on your list? The actor still counts roles from generic selectors (numbered list items, job-card elements). The ATS field returns "custom_or_unknown". Open role count is still reliable.

Q: Does it work for companies with no careers page? The actor returns careers_url: null and open_roles_count: 0. It still returns all other data including mode, input URL, and company name.

Q: Can I run 500 URLs at once? Yes. The actor handles batches via Apify's standard input schema. Input up to 10,000 URLs. Regex mode at 500 URLs costs approximately $50 AUD.

Q: How often is the data fresh? Each run fetches live data. There is no cache. Roles are live at time of run.

The B2B Sales Intelligence Suite

This actor is part of a 4-actor suite by Emily Ward that turns a raw TAM list into a ranked, personalised outreach queue:

1. Hiring Signal Detector (you are here): who's expanding?
2. Funding Round Tracker: who has fresh capital?
3. SaaS Spend Scanner: what do they pay for?
4. AI Sales Personalizer: write the opener.

Used together, they 3x outbound conversion vs working from a raw TAM list. What used to take a 5-person SDR team a week takes 1 person 2 hours and ~$95 AUD in Apify credits.

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Tags: hiring recruiting sales-intelligence ats b2b lead-generation jobs signal-detection

Made by Emily Ward, Founder of Cancel Costs. Questions: emily@cancelcosts.com