Gitter: Take Your Github Scraping to a Another Level

We all love GitHub as it’s a centralized location for all sorts of developers…However, between the nuanced search capabilities and users with greatly varying degrees of activity, finding the right contacts to source might be a real PITA.  Luckily we have a few tricks up our sleeve. Combine this free platform Gitter with some standard GitHub Scraping and you have a surefire way to pluck ripe fruit from the ole tree.

On its own, Gitter is a GitHub chat helper application. It has indexed all of the public conversations between developers working on projects together on GitHub, and by doing so has accidentally (or on purpose) indexed all of these devs on Google.  The site itself seems to navigate with a certain level of hassle our quick hands are not a fan of, however.

Google X-ray is Your Best Friend

You’re welcome to try and leverage the site itself to find developers, but its not designed exactly for that. If you want to speed things up (if you havent noticed Dean is all about speed) then Xray will be your best friend.  Just site:gitter.im/ “insert developer type here” and the fun begins.

Now, just find a suitable link to a project that lines up with your job description. You should already see a list of users involved in the project in the top right. If you hover over each user, out pops a contact card with names, locations, and those fabled email addresses. 

It seems like you can add location parameters to Xray quite easily, giving you another way to refine your search. Despite the world being remote preferred, there are still many employers out there that want an in-house developer.

GitHub Scraping Made Easy

If you’re trying to scrape these users, DataMiner seems to be the way to go. It’ll require some finesse to acquire the tables, but github scraping should be butter for a sourcer, right? Once you get it locked down you’ll be chugging right along.

Some users have their emails hidden, so scraping everyone might not be possible. But, those individuals would be out of reach on GitHub regardless of if you used Gitter or some other means.

Remember, this is a platform that follows user comments. The reason that’s so great is people who comment are usually those sought-after active users. It should make all the difference in your scraping endeavors to know that these contacts at the very least communicate with others.

Other Dean Da Costa Content and Upcoming Events

Dean has lots of great content on our site, as well! Check out all the other free content he’s posted here!

We’re also excited to announce a RecruitingDaily events that Dean will be attending! Our December 7th & 8th #HRTX is free to register, and will have Dean alongside 19 other recruiting and sourcing experts to bring you tools, tricks, and tips on how to be the best in this crazy career! These industry leaders like Dean know their stuff, and are sharing ways to headhunt without spending a dime. Register now! If you can’t make the event, registrants will still get copies of all the recordings to learn on their own time.

Dean will be doing his HRTX presentation on Dec 07 from 12:15PM–01:00PM EST

12 Days of Sourcing is another learning experience we’re rolling out for the holiday season! It’s an email-only event that will have 12 beautifully crafted sourcing techniques sent right to your inbox.  These can be anywhere from unique Boolean tips to vital OSINT tutorials that will shake up what you thought you knew about sourcing. Like most of our events, this is free to register so check it out here!

Authors

Dean Da Costa

Dean Da Costa is a highly experienced and decorated staffing professional, recruiter, sourcer and manager, who also boasts outstanding experience and skills in Human Resources, Project Management, Training, and Process Improvement. He is best known for his work in the highly difficult security and mobile arena's, and the gold star winning numbers he produced. His keen insight and creation of ground breaking tools and processes, to enhance and change staffing as we know it, have proven he is a true "Staffing Thought Leader". Despite all this he remains first and foremost one of the top sourcers, staffing managers and full cycle recruiters in the industry and a true "Search Authority"

Noel Cocca

Partner and CEO of RecruitingDaily.com LLC - Fan of good recruiting talk, seeker of gadgets and adoring father of my kids. When the screen goes dark you can find him coaching baseball, downhill skiing, or looking for ways to make life easier for his wife.