Reed Jobs Scraper

Overview

Dig into Reed.co.uk, one of Britain's most venerable and widely-used job search platforms, to extract employment data from the UK market. This actor navigates Reed's extensive listing database to compile position details, recruiter information, salary bands, and application requirements from across the United Kingdom.

Features

• UK's longest-established online job board
• Recruiter and direct employer distinction
• Salary ranges in GBP with benefit summaries
• Sector and sub-sector classification taxonomy
• Proxy rotation with automatic fallback (residential → datacenter)
• CAPTCHA detection and session rotation
• Automatic retry on failures with exponential backoff
• Deduplication of results by application URL
• Dataset validation with auto-fix capability

Supported Inputs

Field	Type	Default	Description
keyword	string	"software engineer"	Search terms for job discovery
location	string	"London"	Geographic filter for results
country	string	"GB"	Country code for proxy routing
maxItems	integer	50	Upper limit on extracted listings
proxyEnabled	boolean	true	Toggle proxy rotation on/off
sortBy	string	"relevance"	Result ordering (relevance/date/salary)
jobType	string	""	Employment type filter
experienceLevel	string	""	Seniority level filter
datePosted	string	""	Recency filter (24h/3d/7d/14d/30d)
remoteOnly	boolean	false	Restrict to remote positions only
includeCompanyDetails	boolean	true	Fetch extra company information
includeSalary	boolean	true	Include compensation data

Output Format

Each scraped listing produces a JSON object with these fields:

{
    "jobTitle": "Senior Software Engineer",
    "companyName": "Example Corp",
    "location": "London",
    "salary": "$120,000 - $160,000",
    "jobType": "Full-time",
    "experienceLevel": "Senior",
    "postedDate": "2 days ago",
    "applyUrl": "https://www.reed.co.uk/job/12345",
    "companyUrl": "https://www.reed.co.uk/company/example",
    "description": "We are looking for a skilled engineer...",
    "requirements": ["JavaScript", "Node.js", "React"],
    "benefits": ["Health Insurance", "Remote Work"],
    "sourcePortal": "Reed.co.uk",
    "country": "GB",
    "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Proxy Handling

The scraper uses intelligent proxy selection to maintain consistent access.

1. Apify Residential Proxy (country-targeted) — First choice for Reed.co.uk
2. Apify Residential Proxy (any region) — Fallback if country proxy unavailable
3. Apify Datacenter Proxy — Secondary fallback for cost efficiency
4. Direct Connection — Last resort when all proxies fail

Proxies auto-rotate on each request. Blocked sessions are discarded and replaced automatically.

Retry Logic

Robust retry mechanics recover from network errors and temporary blocks.

• Maximum 5 retries per request
• Fresh browser session on each retry
• Automatic proxy rotation between attempts
• Blocked status codes (401, 403, 429) trigger session refresh
• Configurable request timeout (120 seconds)

Anti-block Handling

The scraper simulates genuine browsing patterns to avoid triggering protections.

• navigator.webdriver property masked
• Human-like delays between page interactions (2–5 seconds)
• Browser language and plugin fingerprints normalised
• Session pool with automatic rotation on blocks
• CAPTCHA detection with graceful retry
• Rate limit detection (HTTP 429) with backoff

Sample Input

{
    "keyword": "data analyst",
    "location": "London",
    "maxItems": 25,
    "proxyEnabled": true,
    "sortBy": "date",
    "remoteOnly": false
}

Sample Output

{
    "jobTitle": "Data Analyst",
    "companyName": "TechCorp International",
    "location": "London",
    "salary": "Competitive",
    "jobType": "Full-time",
    "experienceLevel": "Mid-level",
    "postedDate": "1 day ago",
    "applyUrl": "https://www.reed.co.uk/job/example-123",
    "companyUrl": "",
    "description": "Seeking a detail-oriented data analyst to join our growing team...",
    "requirements": ["SQL", "Python", "Tableau"],
    "benefits": ["Health Insurance", "Flexible Hours"],
    "sourcePortal": "Reed.co.uk",
    "country": "GB",
    "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T14:22:00.000Z"
}

Usage

Local Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Set Apify token (required for proxy)
export APIFY_TOKEN=your_token_here

# Run the actor
npm start

# Validate scraped data
node dataset-validator.js

Apify Platform

# Login to Apify
apify login

# Push actor to platform
apify push

# Run from Apify Console or API

Deployment

1. Ensure all dependencies are installed: npm install
2. Authenticate with Apify: apify login
3. Deploy the actor: apify push
4. Configure input in the Apify Console
5. Schedule runs or trigger via API / webhooks

Limitations

• Results depend on the portal's current HTML structure; layout changes may require selector updates
• Some job details (salary, benefits) may not be available for all listings
• Rate limiting by the portal may reduce throughput during high-volume scrapes
• CAPTCHA challenges may interrupt scraping on heavily protected pages
• Reed.co.uk may modify their anti-bot measures, requiring periodic updates
• Maximum items per run is capped at 1000 to prevent excessive resource usage
• Proxy costs apply when using Apify residential or datacenter proxies