{"id":1023,"date":"2026-09-09T12:37:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2026-09-09T12:40:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:40:04","slug":"blog-vacspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/blog-vacspot\/","title":{"rendered":"How we reclaimed time for ourselves without incorporating AI into everything"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

When our AI consultants sat down with us for their first assignment, the question wasn\u2019t:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWhere can we use AI?\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>But something simpler, and yet far more important:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWhere does all our time actually go?<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

First the process, then the tooling<\/b>
\nBefore we built anything, we first took a step back. How exactly does the team work? What happens every day, where are we wasting valuable time, and which tasks are frustratingly repetitive?

<\/div>\n
Three options, one decision made
\n<\/b>Based on this process analysis, we identified three areas where automation or AI could help us. For each of these three options, we very deliberately \u2013 and critically \u2013 asked the same question: \u201c\u201dIs AI really necessary here, or is automation enough?\u201d<\/i><\/div>\n
\n

AI can do a lot, but it costs more, the output is sometimes less predictable, and it isn\u2019t always the best solution to the problem. Our philosophy: not to cram AI into everything, but to look at where automation is already sufficient and only implement AI if it genuinely delivers added value.<\/p>\n

Three clear points emerged during this analysis. One of them stood out, due to the convenience and time-saving benefits it offered. When it comes to recruitment and secondment, it\u2019s all about knowing your client well. Knowing when a vacancy has been open for a long time, seeing when a client posts a new vacancy online, so that you can be there straight away when they need you. That\u2019s part of providing a good service, especially with a large client portfolio.
\nBut what actually happened? Endless, manual refreshing of dozens of \u2018careers\u2019 pages. You were literally looking for a needle in a haystack, without even knowing whether the needle was there in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The solution for this process was the automated monitoring of job vacancy pages. This was achievable within the two months our AI consultants had available and immediately delivered the most obvious, tangible time savings for the team.

<\/div>\n
What we built: VacSpot
\n<\/b>What we built was a desktop app, developed specifically for this purpose.<\/div>\n
It\u2019s simple to use: just enter the URL of a client\u2019s job vacancies page, for example: Bedrijf.nl\/nl\/over-ons\/werken-bij\/vacatures, and the system takes it from there. You\u2019ll immediately see an overview of all current vacancies on that page within the app, but the real magic happens behind the scenes. A smart feature instantly analyses the code of the website you\u2019ve entered. It examines how the site is structured, how the data is displayed, and then assigns the site a score and a strategy:\u00a0<\/span>low, medium<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>or\u00a0<\/span>high<\/i>.<\/div>\n
    \n
  • Where confidence is \u2018high\u2019:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>The tool reads the job vacancies directly and with a high degree of reliability through fully automated processes.<\/li>\n
  • For \u2018low\u2019 or \u2018medium\u2019:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>This is where our AI safety net (an LLM) comes in to help with the more challenging sites where the data is structured in a less predictable way. Because we use this safety net in such a targeted way, API costs remain minimal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    VacSpot in figures:<\/b><\/div>\n
      \n
    • Every hour:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>The app automatically checks the database in the background to see if the number of vacancies at the client\u2019s has changed.<\/li>\n
    • ~10%:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>Some of the sites require the AI safety net, or a quick manual check. The rest is seamless automation.<\/li>\n
    • 1 email:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>As soon as a new vacancy is posted, the recruiter receives an automatic email and the list is updated immediately in the app.<\/li>\n
    • Time saved:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>If you had a large client portfolio, would you check all the job sites yourself every day? That would take you about 25 minutes a day, 100 hours a year\u2026.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      The result<\/b>
      \nWe no longer have to spend day in, day out, searching for new vacancies with our clients ourselves. The app does the thinking for us and brings the vacancies to us.

      <\/div>\n
      Are you interested in the tool, or would you like to find out what we can do for you? Please feel free to get in touch:<\/strong>
      \n06 41 90 56 14 \u00b7 jesse.van.den.dikkenberg@sourcemonks.nl
      \n06 38 62 68 91 \u00b7 hidde.koedoot@sourcemonks.nl<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Toen onze AI-consultants bij ons aan tafel zaten voor hun eerste opdracht, was de vraag niet:\u00a0“Waar kunnen we AI inzetten?”\u00a0Maar iets simpelers en toch veel belangrijker:\u00a0“Waar gaat al onze tijd eigenlijk heen? Eerst het proces, dan pas de tooling Voordat we iets bouwden, zoomden we eerst uit. Hoe werkt het team nou precies? Wat gebeurt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-kennis","category-tooling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourcemonks.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}