Web Scraper

The objective of this individual contractor is to support the ICTS team at ESCWA fix current scrapers and add new scrapers to the pipeline the project pipeline.

Duties and Responsibilities

Background: The world is currently experiencing the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With this transition, the velocity of change and the sheer number of innovations are unprecedented. This revolution will inevitably eliminate many current lines of work yet has the capacity to bring in new lines of employment. The agility of this revolution makes the jobs of the future difficult to predict using traditional techniques. Given this background, this project will tackle three main issues:

• The lack of timely information to monitor the dynamism of the labor market needs.
• The mismatch between human capital accumulation and labor market demand.
• Labor market policies and regulations are mostly outdated and unprepared for the impact of automation on jobs in most ESCWA countries.

Almost all countries in the region are still heavily reliant on costly household/establishment survey data which is not carried out periodically. To assess job market policies, skill sets for newly created job categories that are and will continue to come about from the Fourth Industrial Revolution must be surveyed in a more innovative way. Without a new monitoring technique, information on the impact of technological change on available skill sets cannot be properly assessed. One finding that we can build on conventional survey (household establishment) results is that workers with higher educational attainment are expected to benefit the most from jobs in the formal sector if high-quality education is made available and better job market matching schemes are put in place. Looking at the ESCWA region, educational attainment over the past three decades, during which the region excelled in primary and secondary education (mid-skills), suggests that the population does not necessarily have adequate skills for newly created jobs. Also, in the absence of up-to-date and active labor market policies, the mismatch between market demand (especially in the formal sector) and education is translated into higher informal sector activities in most ESCWA countries. This project is expected to provide a forum for ESCWA countries to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) while factoring in the number of jobs needed between now and the attainment of the 2030 Agenda. The key aim is to support ESCWA States for the upcoming change in jobs and skills due to technological advancements taking place while considering the national characteristics. Ultimately, we will help member states harness job opportunities emerging from the advent of newer technologies,

while taming challenges to attain outcomes stated in SDG-8

• support member states sustain economic growth
• reach high levels of economic productivity
• promote productive activities
• attain full productive employment and decent work for all
• and reduce the number of youth not in employment,
• education or training.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Under the supervision of the Team Leader of Future of Work Project and the overall guidance of the cluster lead, the Individual Contractor will assist the Future of work project in scraping activities.

The Individual contractor will mainly contribute to the following areas:

• Identifying job and employment-related websites for potential data scraping, under guidance.
• Basic knowledge of ethical guidelines and legal boundaries in web scraping, focusing on adhering to terms of service and privacy laws of targeted websites.
• Developing foundational skills in creating simple algorithms for extracting data like job listings and company information, and skills from websites.
• Working using web scraping tools and technologies, such as Python libraries (BeautifulSoup, Scrapy), with an emphasis on learning and application under supervision.
• Monitoring and updating scraped data, with an emphasis on understanding their importance and basic functionality.
• Identify and solve basic issues during the web scraping process, with support from more experienced team members.

Qualifications/special skills

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, or other related computer fields is required. All candidates must submit a copy of the required educational degree. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. No previous work experience is required for this Job Opening. Demonstrated knowledge Python or R, is required. Understanding of machine learning is required.

Languages

• English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat; and Arabic is a working language of ESCWA. For this position, fluency in English and Arabic is required. Note: “Fluency” equals a rating of ‘fluent’ in all four areas (speak, read, write, and understand) and “Knowledge of” equals a rating of ‘confident’ in two of the four areas.

Source: https://careers.un.org/jobSearchDescription/234832?language=en