In case you are looking for an answer to the question ‘How to create job board in WordPress’ and set up a business in the job domain, and want to build something using the latest tech available, a job directory site can work wonders. With the growing popularity of the gig economy and flourishing job opportunities in the major economies, both employers and prospective employees are turning to job boards to find the best fit for themselves. All you’d need is a website, and a data-source to make your business ready to take off for.
The easiest way to do this, even if you’re from a non-coding world, would be with WordPress.
Necessary Features of a Job Board
While we can customize the layout of a job board according to your needs, some features are a necessary part of every job board.
- Front end submissions that allow both employers and job applicants to submit their listing or apply for a job without having to log in. This does two things- it saves time and also, enriches user experience, meaning they are likely to use your site again.
- Good search and filtering options so the applicants can easily sieve through the job listings to find the ones that match their field, skills, and experience. Good filters make the whole endeavor of job-hunting a simple task.
- A responsive design would allow users to browse while they are on the go, on their phones or tablets.
- A good theme with profile areas for business owners and job applicants. Business owners can track listings and respond to applications, while job applicants can easily update their profile, upload their resume, and track application status. A good theme will also allow you to customize your site according to your needs and help it stand out.
Building a WordPress Job Board
Once you have these figured out, you will need to move on to the actual work of building WordPress job board . For that, you’d need:
- A domain name: Something that is easy to pronounce and remember, should be a priority when choosing a domain name. Being a job board, you might want to choose a name with keywords related to job search.
- A hosting plan: A company with excellent reviews should be your priority when choosing a hosting plan. Some hosts recommended by WordPress developers are-
- Bluehost– Custom-made for WordPress, it offers WordPress-centric dashboards and tools. It also comes with easy installation, free domain name, email, and more. It is easy to scale and has 24/7 in-house WordPress support.
- DreamHost – This platform has been associated with WordPress for more than 10 years. The platform is highly optimized for WordPress and our team actively contributes to the WordPress community. It is a fully managed service where their team takes control of your server and handles everything for you.
- SiteGround – This service has multiple tools for power users such as managed updates, WordPress-CLI, WordPress staging as well as GIT integration. It also comes with the same 24/7 support by the WordPress team. It also offers the latest features that would help your site load faster and help your users breeze through your website- NGINX caching, SSD-drives, CDN, HTTP/2, and more. They also claim to protect WordPress sites from possible hacks.
- An appropriate theme: A good theme would provide you with the necessary customizations and a responsive design that you would require to create your job board. Some popular themes are:
- JobEngine: Developed by the EngineThemes team, this theme has everything you need to build and manage a job board with WordPress. It is easy to use and has a responsive design. It displays job listings via the backend and accepts applications from users. It also uses email templates to communicate with users. A handy wizard to guide you through the process is also available along with Ajax powered filters and navigation to minimize page loads. Such features make JobEngine a popular theme.
- Jobify: Made by Astoundify, Jobify has frontend submissions, WooCommerce integration, a fully responsive design, easy setup/video tutorials. The WP Job Manager plugin would help you build a functional job board while allowing you to change themes in the future without losing the basic features. The use of third party plugins and the lack of a setup wizard can be some cons, however, if you like the idea of plugins to keep your content and presentation separate, it is the theme for you.
- WPJobus: WPJobus includes front end submission forms and useful page templates such as the contact us, about, and pricing pages. WPJobus doesn’t rely on any third-party plugins and includes all the functionality needed to get a site of this type online. It allows you to accept payments for publishing a featured resume, job listing, or company profile.
- WorkScout: Powered by the flexible WP Job Manager plugin, WorkScout integrates with the leading WooCommerce plugin. Features of WorkScout and its compatible plugins combine to help you build a fully functioning jobs website with WordPress and its professional design gives it the added advantage of looking appealing and proper.
- JobRoller: Marketed as the #1 WordPress job board theme, the focus is equally divided between job seekers and employers in this theme. Though the theme has only five job types, you can create your custom job types each with their fields. The availability of frontend forms and a new recruiter role makes the theme user-friendly. Optional plugins allow you to insert advertisements into your site, increase the features for handling resumes, create a JobRoller mobile app, and also populate your job site with listings from Career Jet and Simply Hired.
You can also customize your WordPress job board using plugins to increase site functionality, some of which are,
-
- Job Alerts: The Job Alerts WordPress addon will allow your users to save their job search with their key terms and create alerts for jobs that match their criteria. They can then opt to receive alerts on a daily or weekly basis, which reminds them to go back to your site and apply for the job.
- Applications: The Application add-on instructs users to send their resume and cover letter to a specified email address when they show interest in any job listing.
- Resume Manager: It allows users to submit their resume directly with their job application.
- Apply With Facebook: Applicants can apply for jobs via email using their Facebook login.
- WC Paid Listings: It will allow you to create different pricing plans so you can charge business owners for submitting a job listing on your site.
Data for Job Listings
Creating a well-designed job board will be redundant if you do not have a ready stream of job feed to populate your website and attract more customers. This is where JobsPikr comes in — it offers a wide range of data across different geographical locations and niches. So whether you want to build a job board only for data science or for construction-related jobs, we can help you. The data also gets updated every day so expired or old listings are absent in the feed. Several filters are available so that you can provide a better experience to your users.
You might think that integrating this data might be a headache, but that is not so with JobsPikr because you will be getting ready-to-use data in CSV or JSON format and this would help with easy integration. On top of that, you can choose to directly download the data or get it via Amazon S3, or FTP, dropbox or even REST APIs. Both maintaining the infrastructure and updating the system are things that are taken care of by us, and all you need to do is focus on making your website look user-friendly and take care of the business.
Conclusion
Building a Job Board might seem to be a hectic task, but with the help of WordPress and JobsPikr, it may prove to be simple enough that even a team of two can set it up and maintain it. While creating the website is a onetime task, it needs to be updated from time to time, using feedback from customers. On the data-front, any changes required in data or delivery methods can be communicated to our team and would be taken care of.
