Companies and roles

How CareerBot finds and screens companies, reads their job boards, and sorts and ranks every role for your directions.

Companies come first, because roles come from companies' own job boards. CareerBot searches wide, screens and fills in for free, and spends Apollo credits only where they're worth it. You decide which companies to watch; their roles are then read, sorted and ranked for each of your directions.

Finding companies

Find companies in Companies runs a search through Apollo when you've added an Apollo key, and a web search when you haven't, with an estimate of what it will cost. It needs at least one direction with approved criteria ("Approve a direction’s search criteria first." otherwise).

One search through Apollo:

Looks up the companies you like and adds them to your companies.
For each direction with approved criteria, runs four Apollo searches: its criteria (keywords and company sizes), large companies (1,001 people or more), companies hiring now for its target titles, and companies like the companies you like (the ones in Search settings not set to Don't use to find more like it, plus the direction's own).
Drops your past employers and the employers you excluded, and never searches industries you avoid. With Learn from your ratings on, your Targets seed searches too, and companies you said Not for me aren't found again.
Screens what it found.

A search never spends past your Apollo account's balance, and stops if it can't read it. Each finished part is saved, so a search that pauses and picks up again never pays twice. How your wanted industries shape these searches is a setting: see Industries you want.

Without an Apollo key, the web search does the same work for each direction with approved criteria: it asks an AI model that searches the web for companies that fit the direction, hiring or not, and (when the direction has titles) for companies hiring for them now; with a Brave Search key, it also searches the public job boards for its first two titles. Each kind keeps up to 15 companies a direction. Only a company's name, its website and the page it was seen on are kept; a company found again, by another direction or an earlier search, keeps its one row. The companies you like are named when you add them, by a free search of your companies and Wikidata or from their own homepage, and the web search names the ones used to find more like them as "Companies they like (find more like these)", at no extra cost. It costs about the same few cents a direction from your AI budget, shown before you start. If Brave refuses the key, the search goes on without job boards and says so. People at a company are then added by hand: finding people needs Apollo.

Screening

Not everything Apollo returns hires for itself. Screening sorts found companies into places to work and the rest: staffing agencies, job boards, associations, government, schools, media and investors. Rules go first, then a low-cost AI read of the name and website. Nothing is deleted. The rest go under Set aside, in Not a place to work, and you can move any of them back.

Filling in

Each place to work is filled in with free details, the most promising first, 40 companies at a time:

A one-sentence summary written from its own website. A site that turns away automated requests is read through a reader service; with no readable site, a summary from general knowledge is written only for companies the model knows, and labelled as such.
Its job board, found in this order: a board link you gave; a link on its website or careers page; a Brave Search result (if you added a Brave key); a likely board address, kept only if the board links back to the company's site; last, only if Job postings from Apollo is on, Apollo's postings (about 1 credit).
How many roles are open, how many are remote, and how many match your directions' titles, counted only inside the area your Location limit allows.
How it fits each direction: strong, some, weak or none, with a reason, from the summary, its roles, the direction and your approved limits.
With Check companies against your goals on, whether it fits your goals, with a reason (how that ranks or hides).

Fill in details fills in companies that aren't yet. Check again, on one company or a selection, clears its details and reads it again first. Edit website and job board fixes a wrong site or board; a board link has to be a board CareerBot can read. See Job boards for the ones it reads.

Rating companies

Companies sit in four tabs: Targets, Maybe, Found and Set aside. You rate each one:

Rating	Key	What it does
Target	`T`	Reads its roles and ranks them first.
Maybe	`M`	Reads its roles too.
Not for me	`R`	Sets it aside with your reason and stops reading its roles.

Ratings are free and can be undone. A company with no rating stays in Found, and its roles aren't read. New companies to rate also come to Review as Company to rate cards.

Reading roles

Roles are read from the job boards of your Targets and Maybe companies. Every morning at 9:00 UTC, each workspace with Targets or Maybe companies is checked for new and closed roles. Check roles again in Pursuits does the same at once.

Boards are read directly and for free. Apollo is asked for postings only for a company whose board was found that way, and only while Job postings from Apollo is on.
A role listed twice at one company is one role.
A role gone from a complete read of its board is closed. A partial or failed read closes nothing.
Each company shows how much of its board was read and when. A board that couldn't be read shows "Couldn’t read its board" with the date.
Each read brings the company's counts of open, remote and matching roles up to date, for free. When a role matching your titles opened or closed, its fit is judged again (about a cent for every 40 companies, from your AI budget), unless Update fit as roles change is off; a partial read only adds the matches it finds (more).
What the board itself states (pay, work setup, employment type, locations) is kept with the role and wins over what the description says.

Roles that name only countries outside your Location limit aren't listed.

Sorting and ranking

Each new role's full description is read, without the text its company repeats on every posting.

Sorting. The role is sorted into the approved directions it could plausibly be, leaning toward including. A role sorted into none goes under Other roles ("Not the work of your directions") and isn't ranked. What sorts is a setting: see Sorting roles.
Ranking. The role is read against each direction it was sorted into, with your approved record and limits. For each one it gets a level (strong, some, weak or none), a score from 0 to 100 and one plain sentence of reason.

Each ranked role also gets a brief: the job in two or three neutral sentences from the posting, and "For you": why it fits and what's thin, from your approved record only. Details the description states (pay, setup, locations, seniority, years asked, employment type, travel, clearance, visa) are picked out; nothing is guessed.

A score isn't a prediction of being hired. A role that fails a firm limit is ranked none.

The stretch

With Count how big a stretch a role is on (the default), the level says only how well the work fits, and the score is lowered for how big a stretch the role is for you: years asked beyond yours (worked out from your approved roles' dates, overlaps counted once, career breaks left out), seniority well above yours, core requirements your record lacks, and preferences it misses. The stretch is listed with the role in a few plain words. It lowers a score, and never hides a role.

Ranking again

Nothing is ranked again by itself. When you change a direction after its roles were ranked, the list says so; Rank again ranks every open role for what your directions say now, with its cost shown first.

The list

Pursuits lists ranked roles for one direction or all of them (each role at its best direction), best score first, then newest. Roles against a preference come after the rest. Under the list:

Against your limits: roles set apart for a firm limit they state they fail.
Other roles: roles not the work of any of your directions.

You mark a role Interested or Not for me (with a reason). Filters narrow the list without changing the ranking.

New strong roles on Today

Today shows New strong roles: roles ranked strong in the last week that you haven't rated or started yet, best score first. On a busy day it shows the best three, with the rest a click away.

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