Individual Contractor- Scraper

The IC is expected to provide the required research support on areas 1-6 to be delivered on a timely manner. The IC should also help in finalizing all comments provided and should provide all codes and data sets and programs related to the projects by the end of the contract in an organized manner.

UN-House- ESCWA / Hybrid

5 months

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 • Labor market policies and regulations are mostly outdated and unprepared for the impact of automation on jobs in most ESCWA countries. 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. Tasks - duties and responsibilities The Individual contractor will mainly contribute to the following areas: 1. Identifying job and employment-related websites for potential data scraping, under guidance. 2. Basic knowledge of ethical guidelines and legal boundaries in web scraping, focusing on adhering to terms of service and privacy laws of targeted websites. 3. Developing foundational skills in creating simple algorithms for extracting data like job listings and company information, and skills from websites. 4. Working using web scraping tools and technologies, such as Python libraries (BeautifulSoup, Scrapy), with an emphasis on learning and application under supervision. 5. Monitoring and updating scraped data, with an emphasis on understanding their importance and basic functionality. 6. Identify and solve basic issues during the web scraping process, with support from more experienced team members.

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. A minimum of 1 year of experience in scrapping is required.

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. Knowledge of French is desirable. 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.

Recruitment for this position is on a local basis. The incumbent is required to have the legal right to live and work in the specified working location.