How to create a job board on WordPress

Choose between a simple careers page and a multi-user job board. A simple page is suitable when one administrator posts vacancies and applicants apply by email or through an external applicant-tracking system.

If employers must submit their own listings, candidates need search and filters, or listings should expire automatically, use a job-board plugin or plan for custom development. WordPress does not provide those workflows as a complete built-in feature.

For a small board, create a category such as Jobs and publish each vacancy as a WordPress post. Use a consistent structure for the title, company, location, employment type, salary, closing date, description and application instructions.

Link to the category archive from your navigation so visitors can browse the vacancies. Add an email address, external application URL or existing form to each post. This route is fine for a single employer, but you must manually remove or mark expired jobs, check applications yourself and prevent unauthorised users from publishing listings.

For employer submissions and a searchable board, install WP Job Manager from the WordPress admin area and activate it. Its normal setup uses separate pages for the listings, front-end submission form and employer dashboard.

The plugin is designed around shortcodes: [jobs] displays listings, [submit_job_form] provides the submission form, and [job_dashboard] lets logged-in employers manage their listings. If a shortcode appears as text or the layout is badly spaced, edit the page in the text or code view and remove any surrounding pre or code tags.

Create pages called Jobs, Submit a job and Job dashboard. Put the matching shortcodes on each page, then open the plugin settings and assign those pages in the Pages section.

Do not skip the dashboard page if employers will edit their own listings. A missing or incorrectly assigned dashboard page is a common reason users cannot see their submitted jobs.

In the job submission settings, decide whether an account is required, whether new listings need administrator approval, which role new accounts receive, whether employers can edit published jobs and how long listings remain live.

Set a listing duration if vacancies should expire automatically. Turn on moderation if you do not want untrusted employers publishing immediately, and enable reCAPTCHA or another anti-spam measure where appropriate. A scheduled listing can still require approval when moderation is enabled.

Submit a test job as an employer, approve it if moderation is enabled, check the public listing, edit it from the dashboard and confirm that the application method reaches the correct person. Test both a logged-in and logged-out visitor.

Check the board on mobile and verify that expired jobs are hidden from search and public listings. If users are repeatedly asked to log in, first check the assigned submission and dashboard pages, then test with other plugins temporarily disabled because plugin conflicts and login-session problems are recurring support issues.