Stop Refreshing Job Boards Every 5 Minutes – I Automated My Freelance Hunt Instead

Let's be honest: manually checking freelance platforms throughout the day is like watching paint dry, except the paint might be your next paycheck and someone else might grab it while you're making coffee.

The Problem: Good Gigs Go Fast ⚡

On platforms like freelancermap.de, the early bird doesn't just get the worm – they get the entire project. Their built-in email alerts? Once a day. By the time that email hits your inbox, the best projects already have a queue of applicants longer than the line for churros at La Churri on a Sunday morning.

The Solution: Let the Robots Do the Refreshing 🤖

I built an n8n workflow that's essentially my tireless freelance hunting assistant. Here's the magic:

The 10-Minute Loop

Every 10 minutes between 6 AM and 8 PM (because even automation needs sleep), my workflow:

• Hits freelancermap.de with pre-filtered URLs (JavaScript only, no SAP imposters, please!)
• Scrapes the overview cards for fresh postings
• Checks against my SQLite database: "Have I seen this one before?"

The Smart Filter

For every new position, it dives deeper:

• Grabs the full project description
• Extracts all the juicy details (tech stack, remote percentage, project ID)
• Feeds everything to Claude Haiku 3 (because why pay for Sonnet 4.5 when you're doing simple classification?) with instructions along these lines: "Does this match JavaScript/Node.js work, or is someone trying to sneak Java past me again?"

The AI returns a clean verdict: relevant or not. No more reading through walls of text about .NET positions when you're a Node.js developer.

Cost reality check: With outputs limited to 250 tokens and Haiku's dirt-cheap pricing, I've processed hundreds of job posts over 2 weeks. Total cost? A whopping $0.12 USD.

The Instant Notification 📱

The grand finale? A perfectly formatted Telegram message straight to my phone with:

• Project title and ID
• Direct link to apply
• Key technologies
• AI-generated summary
• Relevance score

Image: Example Telegram notifications

The Results

Instead of:

• Checking the platform 20 times a day
• Reading through irrelevant positions
• Missing opportunities while sleeping/working/living

I now:

• Get instant notifications for only relevant positions
• Can apply within minutes of posting
• Actually have time to work on projects instead of hunting for them

Image: n8n workflow

The Tech Stack

For the curious minds:

• n8n: The workflow orchestrator
• SQLite: Keeping track of what's been processed
• Claude Haiku 3: The relevance judge
• Telegram Bot: The messenger
• Cron: */10 6-20 * * 1-6 (because weekends are sacred)

The Bottom Line

This workflow has turned the anxiety-inducing job hunt into a notification I actually look forward to. When my phone buzzes with a new opportunity, I know it's worth my time. Click the link, read the details, apply if interested – all while the competition is still manually refreshing their browser.

The best part? While others are playing refresh roulette, I'm either working on actual projects or, you know, having a life.

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Want to build something similar? The beauty of n8n is that this workflow can be adapted for any job platform. Change the URL, tweak the parsing rules, adjust the AI prompt, and you're hunting on a new terrain.

Remember: In the freelance world, speed matters. Why race against humans when you can deploy a robot army?