I Built a LinkedIn Job Scraper Because Manual Job Hunting is Pain

This is a submission for the AI Agents Challenge powered by n8n and Bright Data

What I Built

My friend Ayush was searching LinkedIn jobs like it's 1999 - 27 browser tabs open, copying links into a messy Word doc, complaining about "great pay" that turned out to be almost nothing. I'm sitting there thinking: we can send rockets to space but can't automate job searching?
So I built the LinkedIn Job Finder Automation. You fill out a simple form with what job you want (city, job title, country, job type), and it finds LinkedIn jobs for you and puts them in Google Sheets. No more looking through hundreds of job posts that say "entry-level" but want 10 years of experience.
The whole thing takes 3-5 minutes vs hours of manual scrolling through LinkedIn's endless pages.

Demo

Here's the complete workflow from form submission to organized Google Sheet:

n8n Workflow

Complete workflow JSON: LinkedIn Job Finder Workflow
The workflow has 9 nodes handling everything from user input to final data storage.
GitHub Gist Link

Technical Implementation

The Magic Behind It:

Form Trigger Node - Simple form that doesn't ask for your life story. Just city, job title, country, job type.
Snapshot ID Generator - Sends your search to Bright Data's LinkedIn API. They give back a snapshot ID (like a receipt for your data order).
Status Polling Loop - Checks every minute if scraping is done. Had to add delays because I was hitting their API too hard initially. Oops.
Data Extraction - Once ready, grabs all job details - titles, companies, locations, descriptions, apply links.
Smart Filtering - LinkedIn's raw data is messy. This cleans it up so you only see jobs that won't destroy your soul.
Google Sheets Integration - Everything gets organized in a spreadsheet, formatted better than most resumes.

No AI model needed this is pure workflow automation. Stateless design keeps it simple. Tools used: n8n, Bright Data, Google Sheets.

Bright Data Verified Node

This literally saved my project. Instead of fighting LinkedIn's aggressive bot detection, Bright Data handles all the scraping nightmares.
What made it awesome:

No more blocking - LinkedIn can't stop properly configured requests
Real-time data - Fresh job postings as they appear
Clean JSON output - No messy HTML parsing needed
Built-in rate limiting - No more API abuse accidents

The verified node handled authentication, request formatting, and errors automatically. I just focused on workflow logic instead of battling LinkedIn's security.

Journey

Phase 1: "This should be easy"
Initial plan: Hit LinkedIn API, dump to spreadsheet. Should take 2 hours, right?
Reality check: LinkedIn has no public jobs API. Web scraping is harder than it looks. I know nothing about rate limiting.
Phase 2: "Bright Data saves the day"
After getting blocked faster than spam email, I discovered Bright Data's verified node. Game changer. Suddenly I went from fighting anti-bot measures to building actual features.
Phase 3: "It actually works!"
Testing with Sarah was nerve-wracking. First run: 47 relevant jobs in 4 minutes. She went from evening LinkedIn marathons to daily job digests.

The real win: Ayush found his new job through this automation - a 6 AM Tuesday posting he would've missed with manual searching.
Lessons learned:

Use proper tools instead of reinventing wheels
Polling needs balance - too fast gets you blocked, too slow annoys users
Simple solutions often work best
Error handling saves your sanity

Now my robot finds opportunities while I pretend to be productive in meetings. Sometimes the obvious problems need obvious solutions that nobody bothers building.

Built for people tired of manual processes and friends who refuse to automate their lives.

Comments

[Florence]

This is brilliant! Love how you turned a frustrating everyday struggle into a clean, automated solution. The storytelling makes it super relatable (we’ve all been Ayush at some point 😅). Also appreciate the breakdown of Bright Data’s role, so many people underestimate the scraping battle. Congrats on actually shipping something that saves hours of pain and delivers real value. 🚀👏

[Astha Jhawar]

Thanks Florence! You’re right about the scraping battle - might just automate this for more job platforms since apparently manual job hunting is still a thing in 2025 😃

[Suvrajeet Banerjee]

Game changer! 🚀

[Yalda Khoshpey]

omg so nice

[Bagnifique]

Oh that nice!

[Abhi]

Hey, this is good. Watching your video, have you used the brightdata verified node? I see you used http node to call the bright data endpoints

[Varshith V Hegde]

Yeah I had the same doubt @astha_jhawar_f1891a37e168 please change the http node to official bright data verified node since the challenge specifically mentioned this .

[离可]

I don't think it's that difficult, I can do it too

[Faith]

Please don't do that, LinkedIn detects crawlers and scapers and your account can get it's visibility limited or terminated form LinkedIn. I know a similar OSS project's creator and users were both banned from LinkedIn.

[离可]

Thank you for your suggestion

[Faith]

Hey @astha_jhawar_f1891a37e168
Your tool violates the LinkedIn Terms of Service and User Agreement. Using the scraper can lead to your account being limited or banned from LinkedIn.

Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (such as crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape or copy the Services, including profiles and other data from the Services;

Please read: linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/...

[Nube Colectiva]

Very good 👍🏼