Configure Backfill

Cavuno supports two types of backfill: rules-based and company-based. Rules-based backfill is configured on the Backfill page under the Grow section of the sidebar. Company-based backfill can be managed there too, or directly from a company's create/edit form.

• Rules-based backfill imports jobs that match specific role criteria — job titles, keywords, seniority levels, and more. Rules apply across all companies in the system.
• Company-based backfill imports jobs directly from specific companies' careers pages. You choose which companies to monitor, and all matching jobs from those companies are imported.

You can use both types together. For example, you might set up rules to catch "Data Scientist" roles across all companies, while also backfilling all jobs from a few key companies regardless of role.

Before you begin

Decide whether you need role coverage, named-company coverage, or both. Company-based backfill requires the company to exist on your board with its homepage URL. Also check your plan's active-job limit and decide whether job moderation should hold new aggregated jobs for review.

How target roles and company sources interact

The two are completely independent. Each one will produce jobs on its own:

• Target roles match against every company in Cavuno's underlying job pool. You'll get jobs from companies you've never heard of and never added to your board — that's expected. The companies that surface roles this way are added to your board automatically as the jobs arrive.
• Company sources import jobs from the specific companies you add. Target-role conditions and exclusions do not restrict these imports; board-wide job filters and AI filtering still apply.

You don't need to add a company under Company sources for that company's jobs to come in via a rule — and you don't need a rule for company-based backfill to work. Many boards use rules for broad coverage and add a handful of specific companies for extra coverage.

When you first create your job board, Cavuno's AI generates initial backfill rules based on your board description. For example, an "AI Jobs" board might get rules for ML Engineers and Data Scientists with appropriate matching terms and filters. These appear in your Target roles section automatically.

When jobs appear after you create a rule

Saving an Active target-role rule is complete setup. You do not need to add companies, feeds, or extra settings for matching jobs to start arriving.

1. Confirm the rule shows Active, not Inactive
2. Wait for the next sync. Matching jobs usually appear within a few hours. On-demand syncs run throughout the day; a full pass of every source runs once a day at 03:00 UTC
3. Open Jobs to see them. If job moderation is set to Aggregated or Both, new aggregated jobs arrive as drafts instead of going public

Optional settings can still hide jobs even when the rule is Active: board-wide filters or Board context in Backfill settings, a backfill cap or plan active-jobs limit, or a Posted within cutoff. Company sources are extra coverage for named employers, not a required next step.

If the rule is Active and nothing has arrived after 24 hours, follow Jobs not appearing.

Managing rules-based backfill

Rules-based backfill is managed in the Target roles section of the Backfill page.

Create a rule

1. Click Add rule
2. Describe the roles you want in the text field (e.g. "robotics engineer, data scientist")
3. Click Generate rule to have AI create matching conditions
4. Review the generated rule and adjust if needed
5. Click Add rule to save

Rule structure

Each rule has these components:

• Rule name: a descriptive label (e.g. "Engineering roles")
• Match conditions: one or more condition groups, each with a set of terms. Set whether to match any or all condition groups, and within each group whether to match any or all terms.
• Exclude terms: terms that disqualify a job from this rule even if it matches the conditions above. They do not block other active rules or Company sources.
• Optional filters: further narrow that rule by countries, seniorities, employment types (full-time, part-time, contract), and workplace types (remote, on-site, hybrid). These sit on top of the board-wide job filters in Backfill settings — a rule can tighten them, not widen past them.

Per-rule caps: up to 20 terms in a single condition group, up to 50 condition terms in total across all groups, and up to 30 exclude terms. There is no cap on the number of rules a board can have.

Edit, duplicate, or pause a rule

Click the action menu on the rule row:

• Edit — change the name, conditions, or filters
• Duplicate — open a new rule prefilled from this one (named Copy of …). Review it, then save. Saving an unchanged copy can join the original rule instead of creating a second row
• Disable or Enable — pause matching without deleting the rule. Disabled rules stay in the list as Inactive
• Delete — remove the rule

One broad rule vs several narrow rules

Either approach works. Within a rule, condition groups combine according to the any/all setting, and terms within a group combine according to its contains any/all operator. Separate active target-role rules combine as OR — a job can be imported if it matches any of them and passes the board-wide checks.

A worked example: if you want every data centre role across Europe, you can either set up one rule set to match all of two groups (Group 1 ANY of "data centre, data center, datacentre, datacenter", Group 2 ANY of "engineer, technician, manager, operator, …") plus a European countries filter — or you can split it into multiple rules, one per role family, all sharing the same data-centre keywords and country filter. The end result is identical. Choose whichever is easier to read.

Backfill settings

Open the More (⋯) menu next to the search box on the Rules, Companies, or Feeds page and choose Backfill settings. The same dialog is on every Backfill tab.

• Board context (max 500 characters) tells AI filtering which jobs belong on your board and which to reject, including jobs found through target-role rules and Company sources. For example: "Include UK legal operations, legal technology, and in-house counsel roles. Reject general law-firm fee-earning, paralegal, and secretarial roles unless legal operations or technology is central to the job." A broad context that accepts all legal practice roles can also admit general law jobs from Company sources.
• Include sponsored jobs adds WhatJobs sponsored listings alongside organic sourcing.
• Exclude worldwide remote jobs leaves out remote jobs open to candidates anywhere in the world. See Leave out worldwide remote jobs.
• Posted within skips backfilled jobs posted longer ago than N days. See Only import recently posted jobs.
• Job filters restrict backfill by country, seniority, employment type, and workplace type. These apply to company sources and to every rule. Each rule can still tighten its own filters further.
• Maximum backfilled jobs caps how many backfilled jobs can be live at once.

Backfill limit

Backfill can fill every slot your plan allows. If that is more than you want — for example while you build up direct employer postings, or to keep a niche board from looking like a firehose — set your own cap in Backfill settings.

• Maximum backfilled jobs is the number of backfilled jobs that can be live at the same time. It is one setting for the whole board and covers rules, companies, sponsored jobs, and feeds together.
• Leave the field empty to remove the cap; your plan's active jobs limit still applies.

The cap only stops new imports. Jobs already on the board are never unpublished to get under a lower cap — they roll off as they expire, and each sync tops the board back up to the cap as slots free up. Changes take effect on the next sync, which runs daily.

If the problem is which jobs come in rather than how many, tighten your rule conditions, board-wide job filters, or the Board context instead: a cap on its own keeps the same mix, just fewer of them.

To keep one feed from taking most of the room under the board limit, give that feed its own cap with Maximum jobs from this feed on its detail page. See Limit how many jobs a feed adds.

Limit backfill to a country or region

You can restrict backfill so that only jobs from certain countries, or only certain workplace types, reach your board. A European board can import only remote roles located in European countries, for example.

Set those filters once in Backfill settings (the menu on Rules, Companies, or Feeds). They apply to company sources and to every rule.

Each target-role rule can still add its own optional filters to narrow that rule further — for example a backend-only rule that is remote-only, on top of a board-wide Europe country filter. A rule cannot widen past the board-wide set.

Leave out worldwide remote jobs

A remote job that accepts candidates from anywhere is workable from every country, so it matches every country filter. An Australia and New Zealand board with country filters still receives these jobs by default.

To leave them out:

1. Open the menu next to the search box on any Backfill page and choose Backfill settings
2. Turn on Exclude worldwide remote jobs
3. Click Save

The setting applies to your whole board, covering every rule and company source, so you set it once rather than per rule. Remote jobs limited to specific countries or regions still come through, as do on-site and hybrid jobs. Turning it on also removes worldwide remote jobs already backfilled onto your board. Jobs you or employers post directly are never affected. Turn it off to let worldwide remote jobs back in on the next sync.

Only import recently posted jobs

A job can stay live on a careers page for months after it was first posted. Backfill will import it unless you set a posted-within cutoff.

1. Open the menu next to the search box on any Backfill page and choose Backfill settings
2. Enter a whole number in Posted within, or leave the field empty for no cutoff
3. Click Save

Backfill then imports only jobs posted within that many days, and skips older ones. Tightening the number also expires older backfilled jobs already on your board. Clearing the field stops the cutoff and does not bring expired jobs back. Jobs you or employers post, and jobs from XML feeds, are not affected.

Managing company-based backfill

Company-based backfill lets you import jobs directly from specific companies' careers pages. This is managed in the Company sources section of the Backfill page.

The Company sources tabs only show companies that are already part of your job board. To backfill jobs from a new company, you first need to add that company via the Companies page — see Adding a new company to the backfill below.

Adding a new company to the backfill

If the company you want to backfill from isn't on your job board yet, you need to add it first:

1. Go to your Companies page
2. Click Add company
3. Fill in the company name and the company's homepage URL — not the careers page. The scraper handles careers-page discovery automatically from the homepage. The homepage URL is required for backfill to work.
4. Save the company

Once saved, you can enable backfill for the company in two ways:

From the company form: Open the company you just added and check the Automatically add jobs from this company checkbox. This option appears when a company has a website URL set.

From the Backfill page: Go to Grow → Backfill → Company sources. The company should now appear in the Backfill available tab (or Unsupported if its careers page cannot be accessed). Click the action menu and select Add to backfill.

Company sources tabs

The Company sources section has five tabs:

• Backfilling: companies you've added to the backfill queue. Jobs will appear on your board as the scraper extracts them. A company stays in this tab once added, even if it isn't currently producing jobs (for example, because it has no open roles right now, or because the scraper hasn't successfully extracted from its careers page yet).
• Backfill available: companies in your database where Cavuno has detected a supported careers page, but you haven't yet enabled backfill.
• Review: companies where Cavuno found the company in its database but couldn't automatically match it to a known sourcing entry. You can confirm the correct match or dismiss it. Once you confirm a match, the company moves to Backfilling or Backfill available depending on the Automatically add jobs checkbox in the resolve dialog.
• Unsupported: companies where Cavuno has confirmed the careers page cannot be accessed or extracted. Backfill works through Cavuno's integrated ATS systems, so companies on a fully custom careers page, or whose only listing is a LinkedIn URL, land here. The Universal Backfill beta extends scraping to many of these pages (contact us to join), and you can always get their jobs onto your board by importing a CSV or XML file or attaching a recurring XML feed under Jobs → Import.
• Blocked: companies on the company blocklist. Automated sourcing will not add jobs for them. You can Block company from the row menu on any of the other tabs, choosing whether to remove the profile from the board or keep it, and Unblock from this tab. Blocked companies whose profile you kept offer Remove from board here.

Enable backfill for an existing company

1. Open the Backfill available tab
2. Find the company (use the search box labeled Search companies...)
3. Click the action menu and select Add to backfill

Disable backfill for a company

1. Open the Backfilling tab
2. Find the company
3. Click the action menu and select Remove from backfill

Resolve companies in the Review tab

1. Open the Review tab
2. Click Resolve all to work through the full queue, or click the action menu on a single row and select Resolve
3. Select the correct match from the list, or select None of these to dismiss the company
4. Check Automatically add jobs from this company to move the company to Backfilling; leave it unchecked to move it to Backfill available. Click Confirm to proceed, or Skip to defer the current company.

Bulk actions

Select multiple companies using checkboxes. A command bar appears at the bottom with Add to backfill or Remove from backfill for most tabs, or Resolve selected on the Review tab to open a resolve queue for the selected companies.

Company backfill settings

Job filters for company-sourced backfill live in Backfill settings, the same dialog as on the Rules and Feeds tabs. They apply to every company-sourced job and to every rule, and each rule can still tighten its own filters further.

How imported jobs are published

Backfilled jobs are published automatically unless you have set job moderation to Aggregated or Both in Settings. When set, new aggregated jobs arrive as drafts and require manual approval before appearing on your public board. Updates and reposts to already-approved aggregated jobs publish without re-entering the queue. Jobs that disappear from their source careers page are expired automatically.

If you delete a backfilled job, the system records the exclusion and will not re-import it.

Troubleshooting

Before troubleshooting, verify the result: open Jobs after a completed sync and confirm representative listings match your rules, show the expected source company, and have working application URLs. If moderation covers aggregated jobs, confirm new listings appear as drafts in the review queue instead of publicly.

Company not showing in backfill tabs

The Company sources tabs only list companies that are already on your job board. If the company you're looking for doesn't appear in any tab, go to the Companies page and add it first. Make sure to include the company's homepage URL (not the careers page) — backfill requires it.

Jobs not appearing

A newly created Active target-role rule usually needs a few hours before the first jobs land. That wait is expected, and you do not need to add companies for the rule to work.

If the rule has been Active for more than 24 hours, or you expected jobs from a company source:

1. Confirm each target-role rule you expect to match shows Active, not Inactive
2. For company sources, verify the company shows in the Backfilling tab (not just Backfill available)
3. Check that your rule conditions are not too restrictive
4. Review board-wide and per-rule filters for conflicts (e.g. filtering to a country where the company has no roles)
5. Check Jobs for drafts if job moderation holds aggregated jobs for review
6. Check whether you have hit your plan's active jobs limit or a backfill cap in Backfill settings

A company is in the Backfilling tab but no jobs are appearing

This is expected behaviour in a few situations:

1. The company has no current open roles. Backfill only imports active listings — if their careers page is empty, nothing comes through.
2. The scraper accepted the URL but hasn't yet successfully extracted jobs from it. Some careers pages take longer than others to onboard, and the nightly support check (runs at 04:00 UTC) may not have moved the company to the Unsupported tab yet.
3. The company's careers page is protected by anti-bot measures, requires a login, or uses an ATS that's outside current scraper coverage. In this case it should eventually move to Unsupported after the next nightly check.
4. The company was confirmed via the Review tab but was added to your board before a system update took effect. Jobs should begin appearing within the next sync cycle (typically a few hours). If they don't, contact support.

If a company has been in the Backfilling tab for more than a few days with no jobs and you can see open roles on their careers page, contact support with the company name and careers page URL — we can check whether the scraper has flagged it as supported on its side.

Irrelevant jobs appearing

If a job appears despite an exclusion in one rule, check every path that can import it:

1. Open Backfill → Rules and review every active rule. A title exclusion in one rule does not override another rule. Tighten broad positive terms and add exclusions to the rule responsible for the match.
2. Open Backfill → Companies → Backfilling and check whether the employer is enabled. Company sources import its jobs independently of your target-role conditions and exclusions. Remove a company from backfill if you only want its jobs that match your target-role rules; those rules can still bring in relevant jobs from that employer.
3. On Rules, Companies, or Feeds, open the More (⋯) menu next to the search box and choose Backfill settings. Make Board context specific about both the jobs you want and the ones you reject. AI filtering applies to target-role and company-source jobs. Check board-wide and per-rule job filters too.
4. Remove unwanted jobs already on the board from Jobs. If you need to inspect every new aggregated job before it goes public, enable job moderation.

A backfill limit reduces the number of live jobs, not the proportion that fit your board.

Next steps

Use job moderation when you want to review new aggregated jobs before publication. If a source is unsupported, use job import or configure a recurring XML feed.