How to build a job site using Blocs?

I’ve just received an enquiry from a potential client who runs a jobs agency nearby and at first glance some of the requirements are a bit tricky. It’s a local company and not one of the huge groups, but nevertheless they need to fulfil some specific expectations.

  1. They want the facility to have all candidates/clients sign up for mailers/job alerts. This sounds easy enough, unless they want the mailers sent out automatically to match specific applicants. In theory they could just set up mail groups for that, but I don’t yet know to what degree they want this automated.

  2. Site visitors should be able to apply for jobs through the website. That should simply require a form to be completed.

  3. They want downloadable PDF files, which is no problem.

  4. I’m not clear on this part, but they want jobs to be pulled through to other jobs websites (indeed).

  5. There will need to be a filtering section to allow candidates to search for jobs by towns, or job types. That’s not difficult in theory, but it will have to be linked to some sort of database.

  6. They need to ability to make changes daily, so they can add and amend jobs easily themselves, so I thought I’d try setting up a demo using October CMS. I’ve not used this yet, but it should work nicely with Blocs and includes a decent number of plugins, including site search and job vacancies.

Any thoughts about how best to do this would be good to hear. I’ve had a sudden lift in request for web work and I’d like to use Blocs as my default design tool, however the requests are becoming more complex at the same time.

If it’s any help I’ve worked with two recruitment agencies before.

I built a site for the first client using Adobe Muse & Adobe Business Catalyst - both of which Adobe has now decided to kill off. It was a perfect partnership for creating web apps that filtered vacancies based on job type, region, salary etc. As it had its own database, we set up systems where candidates could sign up for weekly email blasts of new jobs and information was added daily by staff into the website templates I created for them. They were very happy with the system. Eventually though, they decided to move to specialist recruitment consultant software, as this offered them features like better access for candidates via mobile devices, video interviews etc.

My second recruitment consultant client has a basic website that I created in Muse. As they are now expanding and want to develop their site further, I’ve recommended that they look at specialist recruitment software developers like Firefish or Eploy. With the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws coming into effect in May 2018, recruitment consultants are going to be hit hard on what information people give them, what information they hold on to, and for how long. Specialist software should cater for all this.

Perhaps this not the answer you wanted, but from experience I can tell you, that a site like this is extremely complex and time-consuming to create and set up.

Good luck!

Thank you @DerekDigital I suspect you may have saved me a great deal of time and hassle. It’s possible this request has come in as a direct result of the GDPR regulations and a sudden rush to replace their existing site. I shall take a look at Firefish and Eploy before replying to the client.

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Agree with Derek - sounds like a 3rd party platform will be essential for the complex ATS / job posting side of things…but by relying on a 3rd party for the ATS aspect, you then move away from GDPR regs, effectively passing on that responsibility to whomever looks after the data and hosts the candidate database - so if you can find a decent cloud hosted ATS with a clean API that you can easily plug in to (and one that handles job postings too) , then all you need to do is build the functionality in to the front end, and all the tricky stuff will be done elsewhere!

best of luck!

BTW - Recruiters are malleable people, you can surely persuade / recommend things to them and they’ll be open to ideas!

Thank you @JW1818118 you make a good point about shifting the responsibility onto the recruitment software. I sell online and do much the same by going through a billing company to avoid the EU VAT headaches.

I see Eploy offer to handle the web design and haven’t published any pricing for the software, so I think I’ll suggest Firefish instead and take it from there.

One thing I hate is when clients ask a million complex questions that take up a lot of time and then just disappear, so I’m trying to find the right balance in being helpful, but not becoming the useful idiot, who wastes a week on calls, emails and meetings before they vanish without a trace. My background is in photography, which is less less prone to this sort of thing.

phpjabbers have a job listing script which can be integrated in blocs but it has not all the features which you need out of the box

I entirely agree. The features you need are well beyond what a static site builder can supply.

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I’ve just had a pleasant enough reply from the client, who has never heard of Wordpress, October CMS or Firefish, but they must have some sort of system in place to make their own updates. The current website isn’t responsive, however there is a simplified mobile version when I go there on my smartphone.

All she has said is that when people sign up for jobs they have a list of roles and they tick which sectors they are interested in. At the moment this function doesn’t appear to be working properly. Apparently there is no rush and we can speak next week.