Ask HN: How to more efficiently claim unemployment?

[slacker_ta]

Right now I'm claiming unemployment. I'm not really super psyched to get a job. I'm more interested in learning new technologies and exploring other opportunities.

Right now my routine every week is to apply to 5 jobs that are vaguely within my qualifications on a software job site, then claim unemployment on the goverments web site by copying that information over and checking a few radioboxes. Its not very high effort, but its a flow interrupted, and its about 30 minutes to an hour of boring work a week, that would conceivably go on for 16 more weeks.

Is there an easier way to have applied to 2 local companies + 3 other companies every week, and ideally fill out the UI form as well? I'm thinking of something like a very low friction job application system combined with some web automation maybe.

[notslang]

I'm actually in the exact same position - not super interested in getting a job, very interested in researching and learning, and I've got enough money to be fine for a few years if I really needed to. Obviously I _should_ put forth the effort to build out my resume, apply to some companies that I actually like, and go through the interview process, but I haven't yet. I find it interesting that I'm not the only person in that boat.

As for efficiently certifying UI benefits: I would love to. Here in NY, the labor.gov website is awful and even goes down for hours at a time. If it was any less money I'd be tempted to just ignore unemployment insurance entirely and consider it a trade-off for less time wasted dealing with bureaucracy.

However, according to our claimant handbook[0] we're not able to have someone else fill out the weekly form for us, use an anonymizing internet service, or certify benefits while traveling. In fact, giving someone else your PIN can get you jailed for fraud, so I'm kinda afraid to try automating their system... Given their strictness, I doubt that they would look kindly upon that.

[0]: https://labor.ny.gov/formsdocs/ui/TC318.3e.pdf

[slacker_ta]

I'm thinking a system like:

* A very low friction web site has a button to send your resume to X employers fitting UE's condition, and saves that information to a browser plugin.

* The browser plugin fills out the unemployment website when you log into it.

Could be a safe approach, but it is risky territory and its really hard to find out what the limits of the system are. I think making or using a very low friction job application web site would probably be the best gains for time for the lowest legal risk. It, unlike the browser plugin, would probably be easier to solve for a group of people, because theres not the issue of automating different web sites for different states.