Job Market Recon

Job Market Recon

A Claude skill that surveys **what a job market actually pays** before it looks for jobs in it, then runs repeatable multi-site sweeps that verify every listing is live.

Built and tested on Indian tech internships. The site configs are India-specific; the method is not.

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Why this exists

Most job tools go straight to matching. That skips the question worth asking first.

Running a stipend survey across nine Indian job boards in August 2026 produced this:

Category	Total listings	Unpaid	Clearing ₹25,000/month
Embedded systems internships	120	107 (89%)	2
Robotics internships	105	82 (78%)	0
VLSI internships	13	12 (92%)	0
Machine learning internships	644	—	~20% of a 50-listing sample

A student setting a ₹25,000 floor for AI roles filters out the bottom fifth of their market. The same student setting the same floor for VLSI eliminates *all* of it. Those need completely different strategies, and no job board will tell you which situation you are in.

**Full findings: [docs/MARKET-REPORT-INDIA-2026.md](docs/MARKET-REPORT-INDIA-2026.md)** **See what a run produces: [docs/EXAMPLE-OUTPUT.md](docs/EXAMPLE-OUTPUT.md)**

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Requirements — read before setting up

**You need Claude with the ability to browse the web.** This works in:

• Claude Code (CLI)
• Claude Cowork (desktop app)
• Any Claude setup with a browser or web-fetch tool available

**It will not work by pasting `SKILL.md` into a normal claude.ai chat.** The skill opens job boards, reads stipend filters and verifies links. Without browser access it has nothing to work with.

Also worth knowing before you start:

• Setup takes about 15 minutes — mostly filling in your profile honestly.
• A full nine-site sweep takes a while and is not cheap in tokens. Every listing gets opened and verified, which is the point, but it isn't instant.
• It drafts; it does not apply. No forms submitted, no emails