The Hacker News Job Posting Play
The Hacker News Play
The Hacker News Play is a high-leverage outbound workflow that transforms Hacker News’s monthly “Who’s Hiring” thread into a pipeline engine. Instead of manually parsing comment threads and chasing down engineering leads, this play lets you scrape, qualify, enrich, and sequence your outreach—fully automated using N8N + Unify.
Start by scraping the data. Using the “AI-Powered Web Scraping” template in N8N and the Jina Reader tool, you can input the Hacker News thread URL, define a JSON schema using Claude, and extract key details like company name, company URL, and roles listed. Map these results into a Google Sheet and export them as a clean CSV for upload. You’ve now taken unstructured community data and turned it into structured company leads.
Next, upload this CSV into Unify via the Companies tab. Map your company names and domains, name the audience (e.g., “HN March Startups”), and get ready to qualify. Add an AI Agent node to evaluate companies using criteria like “Is the company U.S.-based?” or “Do they offer visa sponsorship?”—filtering out low-fit leads before you even start prospecting.
Once you’ve got your qualified list, use Unify’s Prospecting node to automatically find key personas—like Engineering Leaders or CTOs—at each company. Exclude irrelevant titles like interns or entry-level roles to keep outreach sharp. Unify enriches these contacts with verified emails and job titles, so you’re ready to engage.
Now it’s time to sequence. Add a Loop node to process each prospect individually, and connect it to a Sequence node that matches their role. For example, send engineering leaders into a “Hacker News: Engineer Hiring Support” sequence, and recruiting leads into a “Hacker News: Recruiting Automation Demo” sequence. Enhance these sequences with standard personalization tokens and AI Snippets that reference hiring goals or their appearance in the Hacker News thread—making the outreach feel personal without requiring manual lift.
Why not just use N8N for the whole flow? Because while N8N is excellent for scraping and lightweight automation, Unify gives you the enterprise sequencing logic, persona routing, AI-based copy personalization, CRM sync, and analytics to run this at scale with precision.
In summary, The Hacker News Play is a monthly goldmine. By combining open-source tooling with Unify’s outbound engine, you can convert community-based hiring signals into qualified meetings with no manual prospecting. It’s repeatable, scalable, and perfect for targeting high-growth engineering orgs on autopilot. Run it monthly, iterate on your sequences, and turn Hacker News into your most efficient sourcing channel.