Job Posting Age Anomaly Detector

Job Posting Age Anomaly Detector finds roles that have stayed open unusually long in a local hiring market. Give it a city, function area, optional keywords, and an age threshold. It returns a clean dataset of job postings with postingAgeDays, exceedsAgeThreshold, hardToFillSignal, signalReason, salary when available, and the original jobUrl for review.

Use it when you need recruiting intelligence, labor-market research, sales prospecting, or weekly monitoring of persistent hiring demand without manually searching job boards and copying dates into a spreadsheet.

Why use this actor

• Turn visible job posting age into a structured hard-to-fill signal.
• Focus on a city and function area instead of broad global job feeds.
• Use ageThresholdDays to define what unusually old means for your workflow.
• Keep the original jobUrl and description snippet for fast human review.
• Append rows into an existing dataset with datasetId for monitoring over time.
• Pass runId through the workflow when this actor feeds CRM, recruiting, or market dashboards.

What it returns

Field	Meaning
title	Job title.
company	Hiring company when visible.
location / city	Location text and normalized target city.
functionArea	Function area from the input.
postedAt	Parsed posting date when available.
postingAgeDays	Age of the posting in days.
ageThresholdDays	Threshold used for the run.
exceedsAgeThreshold	Whether the posting is older than the configured threshold.
hardToFillSignal	high, medium, low, or unknown.
signalReason	Plain-English explanation of the signal.
salaryRange	Visible salary range when published.
jobUrl	Source job URL for review.
descriptionSnippet	Short snippet for quick screening.
scrapedAt	Timestamp when the row was created.

Operational diagnostics are written to logs and RUN_SUMMARY, not mixed into the buyer-facing dataset.

Use cases

• Recruiting agencies: identify long-open roles that may indicate hard-to-fill demand and prioritize outreach.
• Sales teams: find companies with persistent hiring pressure in a category your product serves.
• Labor-market analysts: compare age-anomaly patterns across cities and job families.
• Talent teams: monitor whether critical roles remain open longer than expected.
• Market expansion teams: evaluate hiring demand in target cities before launching local campaigns.

How to use it

1. Enter a city such as Prague, Munich, Lisbon, London, or Toronto.
2. Choose a function area such as Software Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, or Operations.
3. Add optional keywords to narrow the result set.
4. Set ageThresholdDays; 60 is a practical default for many roles.
5. Review rows where exceedsAgeThreshold is true and sort by hardToFillSignal.

Input example

{
  "city": "Prague",
  "functionArea": "Software Engineering",
  "keywords": ["backend engineer"],
  "ageThresholdDays": 60,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "runId": "prague-backend-weekly"
}

Input reference

Field	Required	Description
city	Yes	Target city or hiring market.
functionArea	Yes	Job family to scan.
keywords	No	Job titles, skills, or phrases matched against titles and descriptions.
ageThresholdDays	No	Days after which a posting is treated as unusually old. Default is 60.
maxResults	No	Maximum rows returned after filtering and deduplication.
datasetId	No	Existing Apify dataset to append rows into.
runId	No	External run identifier copied into workflow metadata.

Output example

{
  "title": "Senior Backend Engineer",
  "company": "Example GmbH",
  "location": "Berlin, Germany",
  "city": "Berlin",
  "functionArea": "Software Engineering",
  "postedAt": "2026-01-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "postingAgeDays": 102,
  "ageThresholdDays": 60,
  "exceedsAgeThreshold": true,
  "hardToFillSignal": "high",
  "signalReason": "Open for 102 days, above the 60-day threshold.",
  "salaryRange": "EUR 90000-120000",
  "jobUrl": "https://example.com/job",
  "descriptionSnippet": "Short excerpt from the posting...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-03T10:00:00.000Z"
}

API usage

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trovevault~job-posting-age-anomaly-detector/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "city": "Prague",
    "functionArea": "Software Engineering",
    "keywords": ["backend engineer"],
    "ageThresholdDays": 60,
    "maxResults": 50
  }'

How to interpret the signal

exceedsAgeThreshold is the most direct field. It tells you whether a role has remained visible longer than your configured threshold.

hardToFillSignal is a review label:

• high: old posting with strong age evidence.
• medium: old posting with moderate evidence or partial date confidence.
• low: recent posting or weak age evidence.
• unknown: posting age was unavailable.

Use signalReason to understand why the row was labeled before copying it into sales, recruiting, or research workflows.

Limitations

• Posting dates are imperfect. Some employers refresh roles, reuse job URLs, or keep evergreen listings open.
• Salary data appears only when published in the visible job text.
• A long-open posting is a useful signal, not proof that the role is actively hard to fill.
• Public job pages can disappear, redirect, or show different content by geography.
• The actor does not authenticate into private ATS systems or paid job-board accounts.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to try
No rows returned	Broaden keywords, increase maxResults, or use a more common city/function combination.
Too many irrelevant rows	Add specific keywords such as a title, stack, or seniority phrase.
postingAgeDays is missing	The public posting may not expose a parseable date. Use jobUrl for manual review.
Results look stale	Check whether the employer refreshed an old URL or reposted the same role.
Need weekly monitoring	Schedule the actor and pass a stable datasetId or runId for comparison.

FAQ

Does the actor prove a role is hard to fill?
No. It provides an age-based anomaly signal for review.

What threshold should I use?
Start with 60 days. Use 30 days for fast-moving roles and 90 days for senior or niche roles.

Can I monitor several markets?
Run separate tasks for each city/function pair so thresholds and keywords stay clear.

Does it require an API key?
No third-party API key is required for normal runs.

Can I append results over time?
Yes. Use datasetId to append rows into an existing Apify dataset.

Why are some salaries blank?
Many postings do not publish compensation. The actor leaves salaryRange empty instead of guessing.

Can this feed a CRM or recruiting dashboard?
Yes. Use the dataset export, API, webhooks, or scheduled runs.

Related actors

• CRM Account Research Agent for account-level sales research.
• Buying Committee Mapper for public stakeholder mapping.
• Conference Events Scout for market and event opportunity research.

Changelog

• 0.1: Initial TroveVault release with city/function input, age thresholding, anomaly labels, salary extraction when visible, datasetId, and runId support.

Feedback and support

Open an issue on the actor page with the input JSON, run ID, target city, and examples of rows you expected to see.