Have you ever dreamed of creating your own job list website? Perhaps you’d like one to help all your fellow colleagues in your industry? Perhaps you’re looking for a job yourself and want to start networking with people who’re doing the recruiting? Either way, creating a job list is quite easy and doesn’t take that much work.
Plugins used for the job list
- Pods plugin: To take care of the Custom post type, taxonomies, fields, and relationships
- Forminator: Excellent form plugin with more than enough free options to make this project work
- PublishPress Future: A nice and simple plugin that let you set rules for taking down job posts after the hiring process is over
You mentioned it’s free?
Yes! You do need a few things that actually cost money, though. A domain name for your website and a place to store it, like webhotell, your own server, etc. Other than that, this setup will be completely free, unless you actively choose to upgrade some of the plugins for more features. It’s not necessary to begin with, though!
What I want in my job list website
To set the frame for the project, I looked at how much time I could reasonably put into the website, both starting out and going forward. The criteria were as follow:
- WordPress based: You can build everything on WordPress, might as well use it for job listings as well!
- Pods plugin: To set up all the necessary fields for the Custom post type, related taxonomies, etc.
(I simply love this plugin! I have nothing to do with the dev or the group and have no monetary interests in the plugin, other than using it for several different non-profit websites. Bets of all, it’s completely free so please, if you have the means, consider donating to the team to ensure its future in the WordPress universe.) - Easy posting: Posting jobs will be the most important part of the website going forward. Most of the posting will be done by myself, at least stating out. The form must be incredibly easy to manage, front end, and have all the necessary options available. It must also reliably push the form field entries into a custom post for easy back end maintenance.
- A good looking, easily navigable front end: The front end is probably the most important part. It should contain as little clutter as possible while still letting the visitor know exactly what the job is before clicking on it.
- E-mail notifications to the hiring company: While this is not really a requirement, it is a great feature that does several things: It lets the hiring company know their job post is displayed on a niche website they might not even know exist. It also starts a conversation with the hiring company which could be incredibly useful in the long run. It’s a sign of goodwill, letting the company remove the post if they don’t want it showing on the website, but more probably, create a relationship with another participant in your niche industry.
What I want my job listings website to accomplish
Sometimes, it’s not the immediate monetary effects that are the most valuable.
I won’t charge any company to list their jobs on my website, at least in the beginning. Instead, I’m hoping for the website to gain more traffic and, from there, there are several ways to monetize the content (which I won’t go into detail about here). The niche I’ve chosen is quite small and goes quite unnoticed by the rest of the industry and world. There are almost no other websites and resources that are independent from other companies and groups with specific interests, which creates a great opportunity to become a neutral middle-ground.
Being able to become such a middle-ground for a broader conversation in a small industry in which people are familiar with each other could become a hugely important key to hold!
Setting up the website
I will assume you have the necessary pre-requirements, like a domain, webhotell, WordPress-installation, and are familiar with the installation of plugins. Otherwise, ask your nearest AI companion or Google about the specifics of that.
Pods plugin: The Fields
Setting up the fields in Pods is probably the most important step, so choose your fields wisely! Here are the fields I’ve used for my form and what type of field I’ve used. The * indicate a required field.:
- *Hiring company [Plain text]: Who are doing the hiring?
- LinkedIn [Website]: LinkedIn of the hiring company
- *Location [Plain text]: City, State, WFH
- *Type of employment [Plain text]: Fullt-time, Part-time, Project based
- *”Apply-before” date [Date]: Last date to send the application
- Benefits [Plain paragraph text]: What benefits will the applicant get from working for the company?
- About us [Plain paragraph text]: About the hiring company
- Job description [Plain paragraph text]: What does the work entail?
- Competens/Requirements [Plain paragraph text]: What are the company looking for in an applicant?
- Salary [Plain text]: Fixed, can be discussed, specific number
- *Contact Person [Plain text]: Whom can the applicant contact to find out more about the job?
- E-mail adress [E-mail]: Contact person’s e-mail
- Phone [Phone]: Contact person’s phone
- *Apply here [Website]: Link to the application website/form
- *Website [Website]: Link to the company’s website
- Message [Plain paragraph text]: A final field where the hiring company can give you additional information, or ask questions about the process, etc. Won’t show up on the front end.
Some of the fields above will be voluntary in the final form while some will be mandatory. You’ll have to consider what you’d like to display on your website. The more mandatory fields you have, the more intimidating the form will be, but the less you have, the less information the applicant will be able to see.
Advanced Options
In the “Supports” section I’ve gone with the following:
- Title: Instead of using a custom Pods field for the title, I’ve found it easier to just use the built-in WP title for this purpose.
- Author: In the future, I might create an option for the companies to create their own account for publishing, editing and removing ads. For now, I prefer to keep it simple with a field only.
- Excerpt: This will act as the short description of the job.
- Quick edit: To be able to edit quickly.
Forminator: Creating the form and connecting it to Pods plugin fields
You’ll need a plugin to display a nice-looking form on the front end that hiring companies can use to easily enter the necessary information for the listing and then transfer that information to your custom post type in the correct fields. This can be achieved quite easily with Forminator!
- Create a new form:It doesn’t matter what kind you start off with as you’ll change most fields.
- Add the fields: Add all the fields that you’d like to display for you visitors and enter the correct information, labels, and tags
- Add the “Post Data” field: This is where the magic happens and your other fields are sent to a new job post in the database!
- Preview and Update: Make sure it looks the way you want it to look and save the form.
- Add the form to a private page: While editing and testing, make sure the page the form is on is not public, yet.
- Set up e-mail notifications: Make sure the e-mail notifications are sent only to you, for now. Test with different addresses and options
- Test, test, test: Test all the features to get them just like you want them and make sure they work properly before turning it public.
Other than the previous mentioned fields, you’ll notice I have a few more. Those fields are conditional fields that display, should the visitor have a different contact person for the job applicants than for my team. We do want a means to get in contact with people at the company and it’s not always the same person who take on the applicants to the job so we leave separate fields for that purpose. Our contact will never display on the front end job post, however.
The “Post Data” field
The most important part of the form is to populate the form with the correct fields from your new custom post type in Pods.
- To do that, click the “Post Data” field and head over to “Settings”. You’ll see an option to choose what Post type the form should be assigned to: go for your newly created job listings post type, in my case, simply “jobb”.
- Under “Labels”, I’ve gone with “Title” and “Excerpt”, since those are the two original WP fields I’m going to be using for this form. Also enable “Custom Fields”
Custom Fields
It might look intimidating, but it’s rather straight forward. Just make sure to check your spelling! In the first box (in my case “foretag”), put the slug (in this case “{text-3}” for the field in your custom post type (from Pods).
Then, press the + sign and choose what field from the form you want to be converted into the custom post type field you just put in the first box!
Rinse and repeat until all fields are connected!
Style the job list
Setting up the styling of the job list is quite straight forward. It does require some knowledge of html and css, and possibly even javascript and php, depending on how advanced you’d like to make your website. For simple specific solutions, ask your nearest AI about code examples. It will require som trail and error testing to get them to work in the way that you want.
To display the jobs ads in a query, just create a new page and add a query loop for your new custom post type and go from there!
More articles about Custom Post Types here:
Custom Post Type for Book Reviews
Pods Plugin: Creating new Pods and Displaying Them on Your Site
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