When you’re looking to start an online business, a job directory site can be a viable source of income. Since people are always on the lookout for a new job, whether they want to change careers, find a better paying position, or simply break into a new field, a site that lists jobs in the area is a great way to help them find work—while creating a passive income stream for you.
With a job directory site, you can charge businesses for listing submissions as well as those who are looking for a new job for the ability to apply for positions and submit their resume. You can create different packages and offer various perks for different price levels such as priority position, automatic relisting of their ads, and more.
But before you start making money, you need to create the actual website. Luckily, with WordPress and the right theme, you don’t need to spend hours learning how to code or go beyond your budget to hire someone to create the site for you.
In today’s post, we’ll show you how to quickly create a job board website using WordPress and a premium job board WordPress theme:
5 Essential Features of Job Directory Sites
Before diving into the site creation process, there are a few essential features that every job directory site should have. Use those features as a guideline when choosing the right job board theme for your site.
1. Front-End Submissions
Front-end submissions make it easy for both business owners and job applicants to submit their listing or apply for a job right on the homepage of your site. It saves them time and makes the whole process a lot faster. In other words, anybody who wants to submit a listing or apply for a job has a better user experience, instead of needing to log in, go to the dashboard, and submit the listing or find the one they were interested in before they can apply.
2. User Profile Area
A quality theme will also provide you with profile areas for both business owners and job applicants. This allows business owners to easily track their listing and see when they were submitted and when they need to renew them but it also allows them to see and respond to all the applications they received.
Job applicants, on the other hand, can easily update their profile, upload their resume, and track application status.
3. Live Search and Filtering Options
Having the ability to search for jobs with the ability to filter through categories allows anyone looking for a job to refine their search and find listings that best match their field, skills, and experience. It eliminates the need to spend hours sorting through categories and going through results one by one to see if the job matches their skill set.
4. Responsive Design
Make sure to choose a WordPress theme with a responsive design as many users nowadays prefer to use their smartphones and tablets to browse the internet. A responsive design means they can browse through listings even while they are on the go as well as apply to jobs, rather than waiting to get home to start their job search.
5. Customization Options
Finally, look for a WordPress theme that has plenty of customization options so you can incorporate your brand and create a recognizable job board site. It will help you stand out from the competition and you’ll be able to create a site you’re truly proud of.
What You Will Need To Get Started
To get started with your job board website design, you’ll need to have a few things in place. For instance, you’ll need to buy a domain name, secure hosting, select a premium WordPress theme, and plan out (or even write) your content, including the listing plans you’ll offer to business owners for the ability to list their job postings.
1. A Domain Name
Picking a domain name can be a bit of a challenge. Since you’re creating a site for a specific purpose, you might want to choose keywords that are related to the job search, and a .COM extension. But, keep in mind that there are job sites out there like Elance and Odesk that use domain names that aren’t related to job searching at all. Ultimately, the choice is yours, but do make sure to make your domain name easy to spell and remember.
2. A Hosting Plan
The next step is to choose and purchase a hosting plan as well as your chosen domain name. Hosting plans start as low as $5/month, but you’ll want to do your research and choose a company that has good reviews and reliable uptime. A good place to start your search is by looking at hosting recommendations provided by WordPress’ developers themselves.
3. Premium WordPress Theme
Now that you have the domain name and the hosting plan, you need to decide on the appropriate theme for your site. There are plenty of premium job board WordPress themes to choose from and they all come with benefits such as support from the theme author and attractive, responsive design as well as other features discussed above.
For this tutorial, I am using the Jobify WordPress theme by the hugely successful Elite author Astoundify. It comes with pre-made demos that can be imported with one-click to speed up your setup process as well as all necessary plugins to turn your site into a proper job board. It also comes as an “extended” version, which takes its functionality even further, thanks to some premium add-ons.
4. Content
You’ll also need to prepare the content for your site. This makes it easier to replace the demo content with a simple copy and paste so you can have your site up and running as fast as possible.
Consider all the pages you’ll have on your site and come up with a few pricing plans and their benefits that will encourage business owners to submit a job listing. You will also need to outline and prepare your terms of service and provide a clear explanation of what happens if they want to cancel their submission. Be sure to include a contact form or consider using a LiveChat plugin so they can get in touch with you if they have any questions regarding the submission and listing process.
How to Create Your Job Board Website
Once you have everything in place, it’s time to move to the next step and setup your job board website. We’ll cover the steps to install WordPress, your premium WP theme, required plugins, and create your most important pages.
Tip: you can also check out our free course A Beginner's Guide to WordPress which covers all the basic steps of setting up a WordPress website.
1. Installing WordPress
The first step is installing WordPress. Begin by logging into the dashboard or cPanel of your hosting account and look for the WordPress icon. Most web hosts nowadays have a one-click WordPress install which makes it easy to install it and configure it. If you don’t see a WordPress icon, look for a section marked Website Installers, Softaculous, or One Click Installers. Find WordPress, select it, and click Install.
You’ll need to fill out the information about your site title, description, username, password, and choose a directory of where to install WordPress. Make sure the directory is empty and then click the Install button.
When the installation is complete, you will see a message that WordPress has been installed. You can now login to your WordPress dashboard with the username and password you selected during the installation process.
2. Installing a WordPress Theme
With WordPress installed, you can move on to installing a WordPress theme. While logged in, go to Appearance > Themes > Add new. Then, click Upload Theme.
From there, you just have to select the zipped folder that contains the theme’s files upload it. Wait for the installation to complete, then click Activate.
How to Setup and Customize Your Job Board Website
Depending on the theme you chose, you’ll see a notification to install required plugins or, in the case of the Jobify WordPress theme, you’ll be redirected to the screen prompting you to finish the setup process.
As you can see from the screenshot below, there are a few steps to complete.
1. Enable Automatic Updates
First, click the Generate a token button to enable automatic updates. You’ll be taken to your Envato account where a token will be generated for you. Paste it into the provided field in your dashboard and click on Save token.
2. Install Required Plugins
After that, proceed with the installation and activation of all the required plugins. Simply click on Install and then Activate to finish this step of the setup.
3. Import Demo Content
Next, you can choose to import the demo content. For this tutorial, I’ve chosen the Classic demo. Click on Import Content and WordPress will import all the demo content and images.
4. Create Google Maps API Key
You will also need to create and enter a Google Maps API key so job applicants can see where exactly a particular job is located. Luckily, the Jobify theme comes with a video walkthrough of the process so all you have to do is follow the steps outlined in the video and enter the details under the appropriate submenu in the Live Customizer.
5. Customize The Job Board WordPress Theme
Once the setup is complete, it’s time to customize the WordPress theme and add your own content. The Jobify theme uses widgets to create the page layouts. You can replace the content with your own by clicking on the link in the General Settings area in your dashboard and you’ll be taken to the Live Customizer. Simply click on the blue pencil icon to begin editing the pages.
Select the widget you want to edit and replace the content with your own. By default, the Customizer will start you off with widgets on the homepage. To edit widgets on other pages, simply click on the menu icon and select the page you want to edit next.
To customize your menu and add the pages you want, select the Menu Settings in Live Customizer. From here, you can create a new menu, add your pages, and set it as the Primary navigation.
Lastly, to add new pages, go back to your dashboard, navigate to Pages > Add New and enter your content. Name the page and click on Publish to make the page live on your site.
How to Get More Out of Your Job Board Website
When you’re done customizing your job board WordPress website, there are a few additional plugins you might want to consider so that you can provide your users with even more functionality and turn your site into a passive income stream. Here are a handful of the best job board plugins for WordPress:
1. 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.
2. Applications
When a user views a job listing and decides to apply, they will be provided with instructions to send their resume and cover letter to the specified email address. You can make the application process easier with the help of Applications addon which allows users to apply to a job using a form on your site. This will also allow employers and business owners to manage the applications from the dashboard of your site.
3. WC Paid Listings
While Jobify and the basic plugins are great for getting your site off the ground, using an addon like WC Paid Listings will allow you to take it to the next level and create different pricing plans so you can charge business owners for submitting a job listing on your site.
4. Apply With Facebook
You can also facilitate the application process by allowing visitors to apply to jobs via email using their Facebook login with Apply With Facebook. This means they don’t have to remember a separate login and account for your site and can use their existing login credentials.
5. Resume Manager
Finally, consider using the Resume Manager WordPress addon to allow job applicants to upload their resume and submit it directly with their job application for a desired position. This makes it easier for employers to view the submitted resume through a private link to view the online resume on your site.
Create a Great Job Board Website With WordPress
Creating a job board website is a great way to start an online business and create a reliable passive income stream. Start by choosing one of our premium job board WordPress themes and then use this tutorial to setup and customize your site.
