How Do You Create a Professional Job Website?

A job board serves an indispensable function in the business world. It is designed to connect applicants and job seekers with companies or businesses that have published corresponding job offers. On these so‐called job boards, job‐seeking applicants as well as companies in need of employees can create a profile or post job advertisements. The profiles contain the data used to search for skills and professional qualifications that are of interest for an application. Companies require information from job candidates such as proof of education, work experience, and mental and physical resilience. There are job boards that primarily cater to industry or serve other niches. Essentially, a job board enables both applicants and companies to post job advertisements, which they can then manage independently. Additionally, an app for Android and iOS is available to help users find suitable jobs from anywhere.

The Essentials at a Glance

Which Online Platform Do You Want to Create?

Creating a Job Portal: How Do You Build a Job Portal?

Anyone attempting to develop their own job board software must first define the appropriate niche and target audience, precisely determine the scope of features, and choose a suitable programming language or a good CMS system for building a powerful, custom online job board. It is important to offer flexible work options such as remote work to attract a broader range of job seekers.

About Stepstone

Stepstone is one of the leading job boards in Europe and is used by more than 60,000 companies to find suitably qualified employees, with representations in over 20 countries.

Stepstone uses state-of-the-art search technology and SEO to match the posted profiles for job offers with the profiles and resumes of job seekers on its search & matching platform. This is Stepstone’s core business, and they continue to strive for the best and newest methods to improve search characteristics, features, and functionalities in order to remain at the top of job portals in the future.

About Monster

Monster’s job board software is a well-known destination for applicants and job seekers looking for a job. Similar to Stepstone, Monster has secured a leading position in the job board market. However, the weakness of the job portal lies in its design. It is unappealing, and the relatively weak search results often lead visitors to look for another job board.

The simple design is characteristic of Monster and is perhaps its most frequent point of criticism. The most important feature of Monster is likely its job search field, with position search being one of the most frequently used functions of the site. However, the website is also inundated with requests for additional job searches. Consequently, the average visitor should be aware of the risk that Monster might once again be exposed to an unauthorized hacker attack. Unfortunately, sensitive data has been stolen on several occasions.

Choosing Your Own Niche

But what can you do until you have found your own niche in this area?

To successfully create a job board, the most important thing is not to develop a job platform for everyone. There is already fierce competition in this field. General job portals have little chance of success because they neither have the capacity nor the necessary prerequisites to compete with a job site like Monster.

It is equally crucial to keep an eye on current trends in this market and to immediately respond to evolving needs and changes. A few years ago, it was trendy among young people to recruit students with technical expertise immediately for work. WeWork jumped on this trend and is now the job site for high-quality IT jobs.

One way to stand out from the competition is to offer career events and resources such as webinars and career fairs to attract job seekers.

As stated in Chris Russell’s e-book, “Handbook for Launching Your Job Board”, you will only succeed with your venture if you manage to generate between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors every month. This minimum visitor quota—which you will need when creating the platform—is intended to ensure that the hiring managers of companies actually assist you with enough job postings. In turn, these bring prospects to your own job portal and encourage them to publish their resumes there. It is a complex undertaking and not a project that can be completed quickly and easily, or simply set up and configured.

Some Examples:

Inbound.org

A community for digital marketers was created with a job site and has now become one of the most popular job niches in the market in Germany and many other countries around the world. In the meantime, the portal has been expanded with many new features and is quickly found by many users due to excellent search engine optimization.

Problogger.net

This site is one of the best-known hubs for those who enjoy learning and want to know how to make money with blogging. The creation of this platform for jobs was a natural, well-thought-out step for the company.

GitHub

GitHub is one of the best-known websites for developers. It allows users to share source code, programs, and other documents and information, and to collaborate with other users. This service is used daily by millions of people and is also a great help in job searching, even though that is not its primary purpose.

These two examples demonstrate that the fastest way to make money with a job board is to first create a community. These communities can be very diverse, focusing on blogging, creative content, or even a podcast. However, having a connection to the industry in which you later intend to place jobs is essential.

Keep an Eye on the Competition

Before making a final decision on which direction your job portal should take, you should gather as much information as possible about the competition and the target market. How many visitors do your competitors attract? Who are their customers? Is the job platform growing? This information can be very helpful in growing your own site.

Here Are Some Important Tools Available:

Alexa is a tool considered to be the epitome of this type of research. Simply enter the URL of the page you want to analyze, and you can explore the available information.

SimilarWeb

This service helps you learn about your competitors’ statistical data. Tools like salary calculators can deliver quick results in just a few clicks, highlighting their user-friendliness.

Ahrefs – this competitive research tool helps you gain insights into your competitors, learn about search engine rankings, and find useful and important feedback.

SemRush

Another great spying tool for gathering information about competitors.

Creating the Job Platform

There are various ways to build a job site.

Creating the job website using the programming language Scratch obviously requires the technical skills of an experienced web developer. The costs can also increase if you choose to build your website this way, as programming with Scratch requires a lot of time and effort.

However, we always recommend that a complex product like a job platform should be built from scratch. The advantages are that you have full control over every aspect of the site—such as design, features, and functionalities. Additionally, your project will remain manageable and grow along with your venture and according to the requirements of your company profile.

Using a Standalone WordPress Theme

There are themes and add-ons for WordPress that can instantly transform a website into a beautiful and functional job site. Based on this design, you can then create your website or expand it with additional widgets and functions according to your requirements. Furthermore, there are a variety of plug-ins available that can assist you in development.

SAAS

To get started with SAAS for everything you need to do for your domain, it is advisable to pay the fees and hire a suitable service provider. This provider can connect your domain or make it available within your protocols. Then you need to choose a theme for the website and add your content. Overall, it only takes a few hours from registration to full site launch.

To create a job platform on the open source platform, you first need a host that is compatible with your preferred platform. Then you must install a search engine and, of course, customize the template to suit your needs. This takes more time than the SAAS option.

You Can Experience Job Searching in a New Way:

Copy the jobs from employer websites and link back to them for job seekers. This will also allow you to build relationships with employers in your niche. And it increases your chances of converting your visitors into customers.

Job Data

Setting up the website is only a small part of creating your own job platform. Marketing must target the right audience, and acquiring job postings is a greater challenge than you might expect. Without appropriate marketing and traffic, it could be difficult to generate job postings and candidate resumes on your job board. One way to tackle this is by using an extensive network to gather job data from the internet. Since many job sites allow copying, you can initially supply yourself with the required data. You can also take advantage of our free job feed to enrich your job board with job listings.

Conclusion

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