Locations specify the geographical location of a position.
Precisely locating positions helps candidates search for the most relevant jobs.
They are also used as an input into SEEK’s ad pricing.Locations are represented as a hierarchy from a larger parent location to smaller child locations.The hierarchy supports increased granularity in core Asia-Pacific locations where the SEEK Group operates.
It starts with top-level areas and becomes more specific until an individual suburb is identified,
and is designed to be continuously revised to address gaps and realignments over time.
The hierarchy only extends to the country level (e.g. Fiji) outside of these core Asia-Pacific locations.For example, this is a subset of the location hierarchy for Victoria, Australia:
If a hirer is recruiting for a remote position that is not tied to a specific geographical location,
they can include
Locations can be implemented in one of three ways.
These are listed in order of preference.You can include a SEEK-specific auto-suggest field in your job posting flow.
This affords the most control to your hirers, as they get to explicitly select the SEEK location for their job ad.Relevant SEEK locations can be retrieved from the In your job posting flow, prompt the user to select a location from your internal hierarchy as per usual.
Your software should then retrieve structured address details of the location and pass it into the The The If your location hierarchy lacks separate SEEK will infer a location based on the closest match to the supplied text.
You should test and fine tune the data format provided by your software,
starting with the following recommended baselines:
The
If null is returned, the hirer will be unable to proceed to post their job ad to SEEK and you should:
Code | Name |
|---|---|
AU | Australia |
HK | Hong Kong |
ID | Indonesia |
MY | Malaysia |
NZ | New Zealand |
PH | The Philippines |
SG | Singapore |
TH | Thailand |
work from home or WFH in their position title or advertisement details.
SEEK will recognise these keywords and surface the position as appropriate across our employment marketplace,
including under the “Work from home” search option.A location is still required for a remote position;
this can be set to the headquarters or local branch of the hirer’s organization.- SEEK recommends using a browser token to query locations directly from a hirer’s browser. For the browser token to work, you will need to include the
query:ontologiesscope in your request. - You can also query locations from your backend using a partner token.
name and a contextualName.
When displaying a list of locations to a hirer, you should use the contextualName as it provides more precise information.
For example, when displaying the results of the locationSuggestions query to a user, some results may be ambiguous if only the name value is displayed.name | contextualName |
|---|---|
Richmond | Richmond NSW 2753 AU |
Richmond | Richmond VIC 3121 AU |
Richmond | Richmond Otago NZ |
Suggestions will appear below the field as you type
locationSuggestions query as the hirer types.
The hirer’s identifier should be supplied to the query to tailor suggestions to their SEEK-configured domicile.The Detect button is an optional feature that allows the hirer to use their current location.
You can obtain a latitude and longitude from the geolocation API of their device or browser,
then pass that into the nearestLocations query.
The first returned result represents the closest SEEK location to the provided geolocation by distance.If your software already captures the position location based on an internal hierarchy,
you may wish to map this existing value to a SEEK location without additional input from the hirer.
This requires you to have the latitude and longitude associated with each location in your internal hierarchy.In your job posting flow, prompt the user to select a location from your internal hierarchy as per usual.
Your software should then retrieve the associated geolocation and pass it into the nearestLocations query as described in Option 1.We recommend running this query at time of job posting to ensure that you retrieve the latest SEEK location match.
You may use this method to build a mapping from your internal locations to their corresponding SEEK location IDs upfront,
but the mapping should be periodically refreshed to handle changes to the SEEK location hierarchy.If you don’t have the latitude and longitude associated with each location in your internal hierarchy,
you may use other structured information to infer a SEEK location without additional input from the hirer.Location inference is less reliable than the other location options and
should be used only as a last resort. You should test a significant sample
of common locations across multiple countries used by hirers to ensure the
returned locations are accurate for your use case.
inferLocation query.We recommend running this query at time of job posting to ensure that you retrieve the latest SEEK location match.
You may use this method to build a mapping from your internal locations to their corresponding SEEK location IDs upfront,
but the mapping should be periodically refreshed to handle changes to the SEEK location hierarchy and improvements to our inference capability.The SEEK API provides three queries for looking up locations:locationSuggestionsreturns locations matching partial text input for an interactive autocomplete user experience.nearestLocationsreturns locations relevant to the provided geolocation, ordered by distance.inferLocationreturns a location matching structured address details for programmatic mapping.locationreturns a location for a given SEEK location ID.
locationSuggestions query returns an array of likely locations for partial text input.
You can limit the number of results using the first argument.This currently expects a substring of a location’s name (e.g. a suburb or city name).
Street addresses are not supported, and postcodes are only supported in Australia at this time.You must use the PositionPosting usage type when the suggestions will be used for posting a job ad.
This filters out locations that are too general to be associated with a job ad.QueryVariablesResult
CopyGraphQL Explorer
query (
$first: Int!
$hirerId: String!
$schemeId: String!
$text: String!
$usageTypeCode: String!
) {
locationSuggestions(
first: $first
hirerId: $hirerId
schemeId: $schemeId
text: $text
usageTypeCode: $usageTypeCode
) {
location {
id {
value
}
contextualName
countryCode
# Enable your software to pre-select a salary currency
currencies {
code
}
}
}
}nearestLocations query returns an array of locations closest to the specified latitude & longitude, ordered by distance.
You can limit the number of results using the first argument.This can be used to:- Map from your own internal location hierarchy to a SEEK location.
QueryVariablesResult
CopyGraphQL Explorer
query ($first: Int!, $geoLocation: GeoLocationInput!, $schemeId: String!) {
nearestLocations(
first: $first
geoLocation: $geoLocation
schemeId: $schemeId
) {
id {
value
}
contextualName
countryCode
# Enable your software to pre-select a salary currency
currencies {
code
}
}
}inferLocation query returns a location matching structured address details for programmatic mapping.
This query will attempt to match the details to a location in our hierarchy on a best-effort basis.QueryVariablesResult
CopyGraphQL Explorer
query ($address: SeekPositionAddressInput!, $schemeId: String!) {
inferLocation(address: $address, schemeId: $schemeId) {
id {
value
}
# Enable your software to pre-select a salary currency
currencies {
code
}
}
}postalCode data,
you can provide the address as a single formatted line along with a country code,
though this may produce less consistent results for some locations:QueryVariablesResult
CopyGraphQL Explorer
query ($address: SeekPositionAddressInput!, $schemeId: String!) {
inferLocation(address: $address, schemeId: $schemeId) {
id {
value
}
# Enable your software to pre-select a salary currency
currencies {
code
}
}
}Country | Fields | Example formattedAddress | Example countryCode | Example postCode | Response contextualName |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Australia | suburb | Cremorne | AU | 3121 | Cremorne VIC 3121 AU |
Australia | suburb, state | Richmond, VIC | AU | 3121 | Richmond VIC 3121 AU |
New Zealand | suburb, region | Richmond, Tasman | NZ | Richmond, Tasman NZ | |
Philippines | city | Makati | PH | Makati City Metro Manila PH | |
Singapore | city | Tiong Bahru | SG | 150167 | Tiong Bahru Central Region SG |
Malaysia | city, province/state | George Town, Penang | MY | George Town Penang MY | |
Indonesia | city, province/state | Kembangan, Jakarta | ID | Kembangan Jakarta ID | |
Hong Kong | city, province/state | Tai Koo, Eastern District | HK | Tai Koo Eastern District HK |
inferLocation query will only return a single location suitable for posting a job ad,
similar to the PositionPosting usage type for locationSuggestions,
and will return null if a valid location cannot be inferred from the provided data.Issues typically occur when the location data supplied is too broad or ambiguous, such as the examples below:formattedAddress | countryCode | postCode | Response |
|---|---|---|---|
Malaysia | MY | nullLocation is too broad | |
New South Wales | AU | nullLocation is too broad | |
Richmond | AU | Richmond QLD 4822 AUPotential for mismatch, for example if user intended Richmond VIC. Including postcode will aid accuracy of results. |
- Surface meaningful and actionable error messaging to users within the job posting flow, providing an opportunity to amend the location before retrying. For example:
Unable to retrieve location for SEEK. Update your location and ensure you are entering a granular city or suburb. - Review the quality of the address details that your software sends to the SEEK API
location query returns the location for a given location ID.
This can be useful for debugging or exploratory testing:QueryVariablesResult
CopyGraphQL Explorer
query ($id: String!) {
location(id: $id) {
name
contextualName
countryCode
# Enable your software to pre-select a salary currency
currencies {
code
}
}
}