How to Create a Job Search Website?

Interested in how to create a job search website? 

That’s an excellent market with many opportunities to be explored.

“The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions” and “Job Board Doctor” undertook a joint survey that showed just how important job board websites are. Their report found that 47% of employers continue to post 500 or more jobs on these sites every month.

More than half of job board sites reported that they get 11 or more applications per job posted on their site. 78% of job board sites continue to be optimistic about their business. Read their report in “TATech – Job Board Doctor Global Job Board Survey”.

Job boards’ huge user numbers represent a great way to make good profits.

What is a job board website?

Job boards are the biggest recruitment platform online today. These serve as meeting places for recruiters and job-seekers.

Typically, both parties need to create profiles on the job board website, one adds new job posts to advertise their job opportunities for either part or full-time employment, while the other either post their own cover letter and resume or searches posts by job title.

Bill Warren had launched the first job board website in 1992, named “Online Career Center”. Originally a simple homepage bulletin board. It underwent a merger with Monster in 1995. Read more about the history of job board websites in “The history of job boards”.

Job search websites used to be mostly of a generic nature. Recruiters could find prospective employees around the world, just as hiring managers could find prospective employers. Most job board websites covered all prominent industries. There were relevant ads on these websites.

Just as technology has brought an evolution in every walk of life, so did the job boards change. Over the past two decades, niche job boards focusing on specific jobs came into being. Network sites came up allowing recruiters to post multiple jobs where they can hire from the same vendor for multiple roles.

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Job aggregators like “Indeed” emerged later. They collect job listings from various sites and aggregate them on their sites. These are also called “job search engines”, and there are a few differences with job board sites.

For example, job search engines show multiple job listings, however, unlike job boards you need to eliminate duplicate listings. Compare this with job boards, where you can see unique job listings and easily verify if it‘s still open.

On the other hand, you need to register with job boards to apply, and you need to contend with ads. Read more about these differences in “Difference between a job board and a job search engine”.

What does the job board website market look like?

It‘s time we look at a few relevant statistics. Over a quarter of sites are niche sites focusing on specific industries, whereas 15% of job board websites are generic, i.e., they serve all professions and industries.

Nearly half of all job board websites operate primarily out of the USA. Canada, the UK, western Europe, the Indian subcontinent, Pacific are other key regions with a high concentration of job sites.

Nearly half of all job board websites have been in the market for over a decade, however, around 20% are new entrants. This represents a significant lowering of entry barriers. Nearly 40% of job board websites have 1-5 employees.

You can review the aforementioned TATech/Job Board Doctor survey report for more relevant statistics.

Job board website examples

Let‘s review a few prominent job board websites. This exercise could help you in identifying their business model before starting a job board website.

Indeed

Indeed is a notable example since it‘s simultaneously a job board and an aggregator site. Market experts have consistently held that this site has the maximum number of listings. Employers can post jobs for free here, which acts as a significant incentive.

The company also has a powerful scraping and aggregation algorithm, therefore, it scans many company websites and job boards for listings. The platform is under-friendly, furthermore, it offers advanced filtering options. Indeed has a large user base.

Glassdoor

Another highly popular job board website, Glassdoor also operates as a job search engine. They offer company reviews, which can improve transparency in the job market.

Employees can write about companies on a range of topics including pay and company culture. Prospective employees can review and judge for themselves if a company is the right one for them.

Glassdoor features an excellent ’User interface‘ (UI). Viewing job listings, searching for a position, etc. is easy with this website. It also features rich infographics that tell prospective candidates more about the company. Their mobile app is an elegant one, furthermore, it‘s easy to use.

Candidates don‘t need to pay any subscription fees. Their “Give-to-get” model encourages prospective employees to create their profiles and post ratings about companies. Employers need to pay for their job postings on this platform.

Dice

Dice focuses on technology jobs. Technology, security, financial services, and healthcare are the areas they cover. Apart from searching for jobs, they have a career development toolkit. They have a “Career Explorer” to help professionals find projected salaries, the market value for their skills, and career paths.

Dice has many blog posts and forums, which job-seekers can use to improve their chances of being hired. Technology giants like Dell, Cisco, and Apple post their jobs on Dice. Job-seekers can search by positions, additionally, they can search for all jobs in a company.

Other great examples include Smartjobboard and Careerbuilder. Even certain social networks are trying to get in on the act.

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Job board website features

Before you create a job search website, decide on the features you should offer. To remain competitive in this market, the job search website should have key features, which are as follows:

• Job-seekers should be able to create their resume and search for jobs.
• There should also be job alerts for job-seekers.
• Companies should be able to post jobs.
• Potential employers should be able to search for resumes. They should get alerts for resumes based on their requirements.
• Companies should be able to create their profile. Job-seekers should be able to search for company profiles.
• The job board website should use an intelligent matching algorithm. Read more about this feature in “Maximum flexibility through modular job board architecture”.
• The website should have a simple UI. It should be mobile responsive and ’Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly.
• If the entrepreneur plans to grow globally, then the website should support multi-site, multi-language, and multi-currency.
• Review features for companies are desired.
• A few more desired features are social media integration, newsletter, and integration with educational providers.
• Job-seekers are now increasingly looking to upload videos for presenting themselves, therefore, this could be another desired feature.

How to create your own job search website without coding?

If you are in a hurry to launch your website and don’t have a skilled development team, you can use the WordPress content management system (CMS). It’s an open-source CMS where you can use drag-and-drop page-builders and quickly get a website up and running.

WordPress themes control the look and feel of the website. Good themes typically provide easy-to-use options for customizing the theme, thereby enabling the user to incorporate their branding style.

I recommend the “Jobseek” theme. It‘s a fully mobile responsive theme and comes with the popular “Visual Composer” page builder plugin.

WordPress plugins allow one to incorporate different functionalities. Note that you have the option to buy job-board-related plugins along with the above-mentioned theme.

Filtering jobs, allowing employers to post jobs, showing job listings with relevant information, enabling applicants to apply for jobs, managing resumes, and incorporating job alerts are easy with this plugin bundle.

However, if you want to check out other prominent WordPress job board plugins, you can consider the “WordPress job board plugin“. The job listing, search, filters, paid job posting, and other key job board website features can be incorporated with this plugin.

You also need to find a reliable hosting provider for your website. I recommend “InMotion Hosting” since it has very good reviews from experts. Your cost to build a job board website in this approach includes the hosting charges, the theme, and the plugins. You don‘t need to hire a developer.

Custom job board website development

This approach requires you to onboard a skilled development team. It‘s a custom development project, therefore, you have more flexibility to incorporate differentiated features. The approach is as follows:

1. Choose a ’Platform as a Service‘ (PaaS) provider to expedite the provisioning of infrastructure, database, etc.
2. Develop the website front-end.
3. Use ’Application Programming Interfaces‘ (APIs) to incorporate key job board website functionalities.

A website is a ’System of Engagement’ (SoE), i.e., a customer-facing tool. There will be frequent iterations after you build a ’Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP).

I recommend the Agile methodology for this project over the traditional Waterfall methodology since it supports iterative development. I have earlier compared these two methodologies in “Waterfall vs Agile: which methodology is right for your project” for your reference.

Choosing a PaaS to develop a job posting platform

PaaS is a key cloud computing model where the developer only needs to bring code and application data. A PaaS provider manages the cloud infrastructure, networking, middleware, operating system (OS), runtime environment, database provisioning, and API integration. This expedites development.

I recommend the AWS Elastic Beanstalk, i.e., the Amazon PaaS. This is a good choice since AWS has excellent cloud computing capabilities. They offer a reliable, scalable, and performant PaaS with high availability.

You need to choose a programming language and consume its‘ runtime environment as a service in the AWS Elastic Beanstalk. I recommend Java, due to its‘ powerful features for web applications. You will also find Java developers easily.

Check “Creating and deploying Java applications on AWS Elastic Beanstalk” to know how to use the Java runtime environment on Elastic Beanstalk.

You need a database for your job board website. On AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you can consume a cloud database as a service. Read “Adding a database to your Elastic Beanstalk environment” to know more about this.

A website requires frequent enhancements, therefore, you need to automate testing, source code management, deployment management, etc. You need a robust DevOps toolset. AWS Elastic Beanstalk has a robust DevOps toolset, check “Set up a continuous deployment pipeline” to know more.

Assuming you have your business requirements ready, you can now start developing your job board website on the AWS Elastic Beanstalk PaaS.

Use APIs to create a job search website

You will likely need to use a combination of APIs to implement common job board website functionalities. Let‘s review a few options.

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Greenhouse APIs

Greenhouse, the recruitment software platform provides its APIs. With their job board API, you can build career pages. They have a harvest API for you to access jobs, candidates, and interview data.

The company also provides an onboarding API that enables access to employee onboarding data. There is also an assessment API that enables you to incorporate the assessment feature. Access their APIs here. You can access their pricing information here.

JobBoard APIs

The job board software platform JobBoard offers its APIs for developers to build their web apps. Their APIs enable you to create your own job board, and you can build in other features like a profile database.

You can also include a powerful search feature. Note that the JobBoard APIs easily integrate with Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Jobs2Careers, and other prominent platforms. You can incorporate an easy job application process.

With these APIs, you can display jobs by category, and allow others to post jobs. Browsing employers, and adding new employers are easy. Relevant profile and applicant operations are possible. You can check out their developer documentation here.

Manage your project to create a job board website

You need to onboard a team with the following skills:

• Business analysts;
• Web designers;
• Web developers;
• Testers;
• Project manager (PM).

I recommend you use the ’Scrum‘ technique, which is good for iterative Agile development. Your PM will perform the ’Scrum master‘ role, whereas a ’Product owner‘ will provide requirements in a ’Product backlog‘. The ’Scrum team‘ is a small cross-functional team, i.e., developers and testers work together.

The team estimates the requirements. In a ’Sprint planning‘ exercise, the ’Sprints‘, i.e., iterations are planned out based on the estimate and priority.

The team conducts a ’Daily stand-up meeting‘ to discuss the project status, whereas a ’Sprint review meeting‘ is held to demonstrate the features. If they demonstrably work, the project stakeholders approve the sprint.

The team also has a lessons-learned exercise after the sprint, which is called the ’Sprint retrospective meeting‘. Read more about it in “How to build a Scrum development team”.

I also recommend you use a good project management tool. Asana is a good option, however, you can review more options in “The 10 best Agile project management tools”.

The cost to create a job search website in this approach

The cost of PaaS and PM tools are easily available on their website. API providers will provide their prices upon request. However, the manpower cost estimate depends on the features you want to incorporate.

This is a full-fledged development project. If you need to engage a development partner, check out our guide “How to find the best software development company”.

If you, as a business CEO or CTO, are still in search of experienced software developers to create a job search website successfully, engage with DevTeam.Space via this quick form. One of our managers will get in touch with you to discuss more details on how we can help.

Frequently Asked Questions on how to create a job search website