Category: Uncategorized

The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to maximizing application submission is your organization’s career page. The careers page plays a crucial role in influencing candidates, but its potential often remains untapped.

Everything you do to attract candidates, from posting on external job boards to offline ads, leads to your organization’s website; to be more specific, they lead to the career page. A plain and dull career page with just the open positions won’t be enough. The career page should be carefully crafted to highlight your organization, its values, and missions and, at the same time, should also engage the visitors and drive them towards a successful application submission. 

To achieve all these, there are certain elements that you need to include on your careers page. They can make a world of difference and increase application submission rates. Before we dive into the top things you need to include on your careers page, we need to understand the role a career page plays and how important it is to get it right.

What is a Career Page?

A career page is where you tell the world that you are hiring and make it official. Depending on the organization, the career page can be a single web page or a microsite, but the end goal is the same. To show the open positions, highlight what it is like working at your organization and why they should choose your organization.

As simple as it sounds, getting the career page right is not that easy. The career page is a blend of many things, which we will discuss later. Get it right, and you will see an inbox full of applications, but if you get it wrong, you will see an inbox with very little activity. 

Why is a Career Page Important?

Have you ever seen a card castle tumbling down? All the effort and time invested can be ruined by a tiny mistake. Not giving the needed importance and attention to your career page can have the same effect. Once the candidates spot a job opening, be it from an external job board or offline advertisement, they will flock to your website to get more information and ultimately land on the career page.

The careers page has to talk to the candidates, connect with them and convey what they want to know and see. The only way to achieve this is to start thinking like a candidate and not from a recruiter’s point of view.

Don’t believe us? Take a moment to view your career page from a candidate’s perspective.  Go through the careers page as a candidate. Like what you see, or do you feel incomplete? If you feel incomplete because of the lack of content and information, do you think a candidate will feel compelled to apply? Now, you know the reason why you are not seeing the results that you expected when it comes to application submission.

We have already done a detailed analysis of the importance of a career page, but we will quickly go over the importance of a careers page. The careers page is your opportunity to make a good impression on the candidates, how you may wonder? By putting your organization’s culture, benefits, awards, and achievements in the limelight.

This is your chance to showcase to the candidates why they should choose your organization to work over others and how it will benefit them in the long run. All the hard work you did outside the career page, like posting on external job boards and all lead to this moment. So, if you didn’t optimize the career page beforehand, then you will be at a loss when in it comes to making the best first impression.

The Top Things to Include on Your Careers Page

Now that we have covered how important a career page is and how it can drive up application submissions, now it is time to look at the top things that can make up a careers page. These elements – every single one of these, plays a crucial part when the candidates are checking out your organization.

1. Talk about your organization

Keep it short and simple. The points to focus on are: Who you are, what you do, your journey, what makes you special, and why you are in a different league than your competitors. Make sure to write the content so that it amuses the audience and evokes a sense of curiosity in them to explore more about your organization.

2. Talk about the company culture

Will you take the risk of walking into the unknown and later regretting it? Give the candidates a glimpse into your work culture and what makes you stand out. Highlight your mission, core values, and philosophy. Most candidates prioritize a good work culture and atmosphere over salary. A place where they can truly grow, learn and showcase their skills matters more than anything.

So, show the candidates that your workplace is the perfect ground to achieve this. You can achieve this by showing employee testimonials or highlighting the reviews you have gained on external websites like Glassdoor and GoodFirms.

3. Awards and Recognition

An opportunity to work for an organization that has bagged multiple awards and is recognized by clients globally is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But do the candidates know about this? If you are not conveying the recognition you have received and the awards bagged over the years, then you are just a normal organization for them.

Therefore showcasing your achievements on the careers page will only create a good brand image and at the same time, will elevate your organization to a league of its own when compared to others.

4. Benefits and Perks

An organization that has strong values is focused on its mission, bagged multiple awards, and has a good work culture. So far so good. The candidates are interested, but now comes the primary factor, What’s in it for them?

When you offer benefits and perks, you come out as an organization that values employees and cares for them. The most common benefits and perks that an organization should include are:

• Paid time off
• Flexible work schedule
• Health insurance
• Periodic salary revisions
• Option to work remotely

5. Include pictures and videos

Share the smiling faces of your team, and office space and showcase the fun you have. Remember how we mentioned you should highlight the work culture and atmosphere? The best way to do that is by adding images and videos of your team having fun and engaging in activities. This will give the candidates the needed assurance that your organization stays true to the work culture and atmosphere that was mentioned and wasn’t a gimmick.

6. Use a clearly defined job post

We have already talked about how a job post is different from a job description and how it can help you. Based on the open position and the targeted candidates, craft your job post in a way that aligns with the applicants’ goals and visions. The point to note here is to always use a job post and not a job description.

7. Enable Job Alerts

As an organization, you always want to keep the candidates close and in the loop. What if a candidate visits your organization and finds that you don’t have a current opening that suits them? How can they keep track of it?

In such situations, enabling job alerts for candidates to sign up is essential. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. The candidates will be alerted automatically when a new open position goes live, even if the position doesn’t suit them, they can still share the news. For a recruiter, this is a bonus, you get to have a pool of possible candidates and referrals without doing any additional work.

8. Keep the application forms simple

Even after doing all the hard work to captivate the candidates and drive them toward the required action, your job is not over yet. If you decide to make the application form a long and winding one, the candidates are sure to quit halfway. 

If the initial process is lengthy, what follows will be even worse. This is the thought that will arise in the mind of the majority of the candidates. So, keep the application form as simple and short as possible. With our job board plugin WP Job Openings, creating application forms is easier than ever before. You can create application forms, enable as many fields as you want with our form builder, enable file uploads, have different forms for multiple openings, and so on.

Wrapping Up

So if you were thinking about only including the current job openings or having a career page with just the openings, now will be the time to change it. As we have discussed a career page that houses all the above-mentioned elements will see the desired outcome.

A lot of organizations are out there with the same goal, which is to lure the best candidates to their organization. Most of the time they are successful and able to close the open position quicker than you. This makes you wonder how they were able to attract more candidates and close the open position so quickly while you are still waiting for more applications and far from finding the perfect one.

The only way to attract a good number of candidates is with a well-crafted job post. But the majority of recruiters still use a job description instead of a job post with the notion that they are the same. In reality, they are not. A well-defined job advertisement can be a crucial factor when it comes to attracting candidates.

To attract talented candidates to your organization, you need to write job ads that entice candidates, create the best first impression, put your organization in the limelight, and are worthy of their time. Before we look at the top ways to write job posts that will attract a large pool of talented candidates, we first need to distinguish a job description from a job post.

The Difference Between Job Description and Job Posts

There’s a fine line between a job post and a job description. Unknowingly the majority of recruiters still use a job description instead of a job post to advertise an open position. In reality, both of them are different and serves a different purpose. So, knowing the difference between the two is vital when it comes to attracting talented candidates.

What is a Job Description?

The job description is mainly meant to stay inside an organization. This is an internal document, more of a technical document that refers to the roles and responsibilities of a particular open position, which is created after hours of research. This also includes the experience needed, the educational background, duties, soft and hard skills, and many more. The job description acts as the foundation from which we build the job post.

One major point to always keep in mind is that the job description focuses on the candidates and not on the organization. Job descriptions allow recruiters to craft appropriate interview questions, screen the candidates properly, and can also be used as a benchmark to rate the candidates.

Key points that are always in a job description are :

• Job title
• Overview of the position
• Job location
• Responsibilities
• Needed skills
• Required experience 
• Education qualifications
• Salary range

An example of a job description will be like this:

Job Title: PHP Developer  Position Summary: Work with the product team. Job Location: Texas, Hybrid Responsibilities:  Focus on timely bug fixes, updates, and enhancements.  Test the products on a daily basis Needed Skills: Good knowledge of PHP, HTML, JS, and database management. Experience Required: 3 years of experience needed Educational Qualification: Engineering background Employment type: Permanent Salary range: $5000-$6000 Perks and benefits– Medical insurance, paid sick time off

What is a Job Post?

When it’s time to announce to the world, make it official that you have an open position, then you have to go with a job post. A job post is what the possible candidates will see and want to see. The job post can be defined as the marketing version of the job description. The main goal of a job ad is to attract candidates to your organization. The job advertisement can be seen on websites, online job boards, newspapers, and so on.

The job post does talk about the organization, its values, benefits, work culture, and mission, unlike the job description which doesn’t. A few recruiters still make the mistake of using a job description instead of an actual job advertisement. The job post has to grab the attention of the candidates, invoke a sense of curiosity and has to make your organization stand out from the rest. Therefore language and tone are critical.

Even though job posts share some similarities with the job description, it is the way in which things are delivered to the candidate that makes all the difference.

Key points that are always in a job description are:

• Job title
• An overview of the company
• Position Overview
• Work location
• Benefits
• Required skills
• Selection procedure
• Salary

Example of a job post:

Lead JavaScript Developer About Us: We are a web product studio that focuses mostly on providing the best of design solutions and web products that help organizations to elevate themselves in their respective fields. We cater to clients globally and have a wide range of online products and services. Our product is library growing and expanding as we are speaking right now. Job Description: As a part of our growth and expansion, we are on the hunt for a Lead Javascript developer. You will be in charge of managing the products and ensuring timely updates of enhancements, updates, and bug fixes. You will be working closely with the product development team and the other core developers of the team as and when needed.   Duties and Responsibilities: – Spearhead the development of current products and set up a proper workflow for future enhancements.  – Listen to user queries and feedback and tackle the issue appropriately. – Keep a proper record of issues and discuss with the team the possible solutions to maintain a good user experience across all our products. – Provide feedback on new features and ensure consistency all around. – Make sure the products are optimized across different operating systems. Job Location: Scotland, Hybrid.  Pay Range: $6000-$7000/monthly Benefits: All our employees are fully protected with health insurance and can also avail paid sick leaves. We focus on getting the work done, which means you can work from the comforts of your home, or from any place you please. We also provide biannual salary appraisals to our employees and team outings twice a year to take the steam off. Selection Criteria: The successful candidate should have 8 years of work experience. Ideally, the candidate should have an engineering background, but in the end skill and experience will prevail. The candidate must also be well-versed in React, Angular, and jQuery. Contact Information: Send your resumes to [email protected]  on or before xx.xx.xxxx

Now as you can see, there is a clear distinction between a job post and a job description. Now, ask yourself, which will attract more candidates, a job description or a job post? The candidates want to know more about an organization, its values, and its work ethics. This is also your chance, as an organization to make an impact on the candidates and drive them to a successful response.

Top Ways to Write Job Posts That Attract Candidates

Now that we have clearly distinguished between a job post and a job description, it’s time to look at how to make a job ad that will attract candidates. The most important points to keep in mind to craft the perfect job advertisement are:

Be specific about the job title

When it comes to the job title one should be precise, and professional. Don’t go overboard. The job title is what initially grabs the attention of the candidates. Some recruiters like to add words that have no relation to the post whatsoever hoping to gain more attention from the candidates. But, it is only going to backfire and prevent most of the candidates from applying to your organization. 

For example, using words such as expert, super, and professional is a big no. Stick to the industry standard jargon and that is all that is needed. Having a proper job title will allow the candidate to draw a route map of how their career can advance with the company. If the post is about “Junior JavaScript Developer”, then the candidate can have a higher possibility of moving to a senior position once he/she has acquired the relevant experience.

Highlight your organization

Give a short description of your organization. How, when, and where you started your journey, and so on. Make your organization stand apart from the rest. This is the opportunity to make a good first impression, so make it count. Talk about your organization’s missions, goals, and achievements and how the candidates will be playing a major role in all of it in the coming future.

Also highlight your company’s values, culture, and achievements. Give them a vivid picture of how all of these will benefit and shape their career. The most important thing is to show them the big picture, and what they can achieve. But make sure you don’t overdo it, keep it simple.

Describe the position in an appealing way

So you have grabbed the candidates’ attention. Now comes the most important part. The way you convey the job duties and responsibilities, and how effectively you can weave the words so that it aligns with the group of candidates that you are targeting. This in the end will determine how many application submissions you receive.

Most recruiters often make the mistake of plainly mentioning the duties and responsibilities of the concerned position. But that alone is not enough. Modern candidates need much more than this. They need to know what’s in it for them. Now as a recruiter you need to add various elements which will make the candidates take up action, and make them say that this is the organization they want to work for. You have to combine the job duties and responsibilities with the goals and missions that match the targeted audience.

For example- Instead of simply copying and pasting the job description which is  – “Work on timely bug fixes and updates”. You can go with, “In this role, it will be your responsibility to test the products, deliver timely updates, and enhancements and maintain the usability of the product across all the platforms”. The latter will give the candidates a sense of atmosphere where they can truly showcase their skills.

Convey to the candidates how they can grow their careers much better at your organization than anywhere else. Mention all the opportunities they will get. Give them a clear picture of how a day in the office will be and how the role will put their skills to the test and the same time allow them to develop and learn new skills.

Be precise about the required skills

Now, that you have given them a strong feeling, that this is the organization to work for, now comes the skills and other eligibility criteria for the open position. Be thorough and to the point. You do not want to confuse the candidates or leave any room for doubt.

Mention the required skill as well as the good-to-have skills along with the educational background and experience needed. Leave no stone unturned and be precise about what all you are looking for.

Salary and Benefits

The final push the candidates need is a perfect blend of benefits and salary. The candidates must get a sense that they are receiving a competitive salary and also benefits. By benefits, we are referring to bonuses, health insurance, and the new norms that are an option to work from home and flexible work hours.
Once you have crafted a job description, what will make the hiring process a lot more efficient is a robust recruitment plugin like WPJob Openings. With this tool, you can handle the high influx of candidates’ applications effortlessly. You can create customized job forms, set alerts, sort and filter out applicants with ease, and more.

Wrapping Up

The first step to attracting the right set of candidates begins once you realize the difference between a job description and a job post. With a perfectly crafted job advertisement, you can increase the applications you receive from the right talent set.

Every candidate has had this moment and the majority still do. The moment they see a job opening, they have flashbacks of the eternal wait after applying and the automated emails. The feeling of deja vu, the never-ending loop. What we are referring to is the familiar situation of being ghosted by recruiters.

But what the recruiters don’t realize is that this type of behavior will only tarnish the organization’s reputation. How? Because most of the candidates do share their experiences with each other, or they can leave reviews online, and so on. This can influence other applicants when they are doing research about the organization and can prevent them from submitting an application. So, in order to prevent such a backlash, you must provide a good candidate experience thought out the hiring process.

So, as a recruiter knowing when and how to break the news to candidates, that they didn’t make the cut is of utmost importance. Therefore having a proper plan to let the applicants know that they are being rejected without creating a bad candidate experience is vital. We will explore the common mistakes and how you can avoid them so as to ensure a good candidate experience right from start to end.

How Does a Bad Candidate Experience Affect Your Organization?

A candidate upon seeing an open position won’t immediately apply for the job. They will spend hours researching the organization and crafting a cover letter to give them an edge over others. All of this is in the hope that the recruiter will reach out to them.

But then, days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and finally, the candidates accept their fate and move on. But here is where the problems start for an organization. The applicants are definitely going to share their experiences with their colleagues. Be it a good experience or bad, they will share their experiences.

Let’s take a scenario. The recruiters contacted the candidates. They were told they didn’t meet their expectations and hence won’t be moving forward with their applications. This is an ideal scenario. Even though they didn’t make it, the recruiters took the time to let them know and didn’t ghost them. The candidates, even though they didn’t reach their goal of being selected, will share with their colleagues how the recruitment team contacted them and gave their feedback.

So, how does this benefit your organization? This small act of reaching out to applicants and updating them on their status will create a good rep for your organization amongst other candidates. A good rep, in the end, will create a good brand image for your company amongst job seekers which in turn will result in more applications in the future ultimately helping you find the right candidate a tad bit faster.

Now, the second scenario is where you don’t contact them. Just like the above scenario, they are going to share their experiences. But in this situation, it will be a negative review, and negative reviews spread like wildfire. A negative candidate experience does influence how many applications you receive. Because when candidates search your organization and find negative reviews, they will think twice before applying to such an organization that doesn’t contact all the candidates and updates them about their status. Thereby potentially robbing the opportunity of good resumes from reaching your inbox.

Different Scenarios and Ways to Disqualify Candidates Without Creating a Bad Experience

Now that you have decided to invest the time and effort to contact applicants to let them know they aren’t selected, there are a few points to keep in mind. The key element to note is at which stage you contact them and how you deliver the news and feedback. Yes, it will be heart-wrenching, but it’s part of the hiring process.

There are three stages at which you could let the candidates know that you are not moving forward with their applications.

• The initial stage- which is the moment you view their applications
• The Phone Screening Stage
• The interview stage

Be it at any stage, the most important points to keep in mind are:

• Get to the heart of the matter
• Be respectful 
• Mention why they weren’t selected
• Provide valuable feedback
• Encourage the candidates to apply in the future
• Thank the candidates

Rejecting candidates in the initial stage

For recruiters, taking a glance at the resume is all that is needed to know whether the applicant will move to the next stage or not.  The reason why they won’t make it to the next stage can vary. Maybe the candidates don’t have the needed experience or skills or lack soft skills or technical skills, and so on.

At this stage, the best option is to send out personalized emails to let them know that you won’t be moving forward with their application. By contacting them early in the initial stages, even if it is to deliver the news about being rejected, the candidates can move forward, devote their time to preparing for an interview at a different organization, and also look at other viable options. Yes, contacting multiple applicants at the initial stage is not easy. With many applicants, reaching out to each one of them won’t be easy. But with our recruitment plugin WPJob Openings, you can predefine email templates to be automatically sent out to applicants when their application status changes.

Rejecting candidates after the phone screening

Once you are happy with the candidates’ resumes, next comes the phone screening. Recruiters use phone screening to determine whether a candidate is eligible to be moved forward in the recruitment stage. The question that the recruiters will ask will vary depending on the organization, but for a candidate, this is the time to leave a good impression.

Once you are done with the phone screening and made a list of applicants that won’t make it to the next stage, the next focus will be on the candidates that made it to the next round, right? So, what about the candidates you rejected? You have to let them know that they are not selected. Just like how you find time to contact candidates that have made it to the next round, you should make the same effort to contact the rejected candidates and give them your feedback.

The best course of action is to send them a rejection email. Highlighting that you would like to have a conversation with them to provide feedback. If the candidate replies and wishes to have a conversation, call them and mention why they weren’t selected and the areas they need to improve and assure them that they can apply to your organization in the future.

Rejecting candidates after the final interview

The candidates have gone through a lot if they have reached this stage. They impressed you with their skills, aced the phone screening, and just have one final hurdle to cross – the face-to-face interview. At this stage, if you reject them, the best option is not to send an automated email, doesn’t matter how personalized it is.

The best action is to call them and give them your valuable feedback. That is it. Call them. Yes, it won’t be easy, but they would like to hear why they didn’t make it. Give them constructive feedback on the areas where they need to improve, the skills they should learn, and anything that can help them with their career. Assure them that just because they were rejected now doesn’t mean they are rejected forever. Let them know they can apply for a future open position in your organization, and all is not lost.

Wrapping Up

Providing a good candidate experience is necessary for an organization to attract talented candidates in the long run and create a good brand image. Applicants will hesitate to apply to organizations that don’t reach out and update them about their status in the hiring process. Establishing proper communication is your key to providing the best candidate experience.

Going through resumes, contacting multiple candidates, days pass by in the blink of an eye, and nothing to show at the end of the day. This is what a recruiter’s life will be during the hiring process and will continue until you find the right set of candidates. But how long will it take? Why is finding the right candidate taking longer than you expected?

If you are reading this, you are either going through such a scenario or have experienced this. Now, you want to ensure that you never go through this in the future. Reducing the time to hire is vital for an organization. The lesser time taken to find the right set of candidates, the better it is. The longer the time to hire, the greater its impact on your organization’s productivity and revenue.

We will explore what time to hire is, how crucial it can be, and also look at the top ways to reduce the hiring time.

What Exactly is Time to Hire?

Time to hire refers to the time frame calculated from the moment a candidate enters your talent pipeline to the day he/she accepts the job offer. In other words, it refers to the total days that were required for both the recruiters and the candidates to go over the various recruitment stages and in the end the candidate accepting the job offer. An even simpler definition is the time that was required by your HR team to hire the selected candidate.

The lower the time to hire, the more efficient your hiring process and your HR team are.

We can explain it with an example: You have an open position at your organization, and a candidate submits a successful application on September 1. The candidate accepts the job offer on September 18. So the total time taken to hire the candidate is 17 days.

Time to hire = day of offer acceptance – day of application submission

Time to hire is often confused with time to fill. But they are not the same. Time to fill is calculated from the moment the job posting goes live to its closure date which ends with the recruiter finding the right candidate. In all cases, the time to fill is longer than the time to hire.

How Important is it to Reduce the Time to Hire?

What matters the most is finding the candidate, right? Well, it is, but that’s not the whole picture. Getting the right candidate to join your team in the least time is also vital. Why? There are many reasons, one of them being, you are not the only organization to which they have applied.  The more you delay the hiring process, the greater the chance of the applicant accepting an offer from a different organization. This in turn means you have to start the hunt for a new candidate all over again.

There are quite a few reasons why you should reduce the time to hire and they are

• The first reason why you want to reduce the time required for hiring is to make sure you don’t lose a candidate. As we have already discussed, the candidate has applied to multiple organizations in most cases as the ultimate goal of the candidate is to land a job as early as possible. If your hiring process is long and complicated, the competition has already bagged the best candidates.
• Tracking your time to hire can give you an accurate picture of how efficient your hiring process is. If it takes a lot of time to complete the recruitment process, you should start looking into your hiring process to understand where you can improve. Find at which stage you are losing time and see if any other factors play a part.
• The more time required to hire a candidate, the higher the expenditure. By expenditure we mean, the external job board pricing, paying for job ads on offline media, and so on. So, by reducing the hiring time, you can cut down the recruitment expenses by a good margin.
• With the failure to find the right candidate, what else is affected? The project schedule. With a lack of competent candidates, the pending work gets delayed and will affect the productivity of the organization to a great extent.
• Reducing the time required to complete the hiring process also affects the candidate experience, The shorter the time to hire, the better the candidate experience.

Top Ways to Reduce Your Time to Hire

Now that we have covered what time to hire is and how important it is, it’s time to look at how to reduce it. Various factors can contribute to reducing the time required to hire the right candidate and they are:

1. Establish a proper hiring plan 

Without having a proper foundation and route map for the hiring process, all the other points that we are about to cover will not make any sense. If you are someone who says I’ll plan the process one step at a time, it’s a big no. You should have planned out the entire recruitment process before posting the job openings.

A rough outline would be like this:

Create a job description>Plan the different interview stages>Write a clear job Post>Post on external job boards and offline ads>Final offer

If you are someone who hasn’t planned out the journey now will be the time to create a proper map of the hiring process and make it structured. You should decide on the various interview stages, how many of them will be there, and the tasks that will be assigned to the candidates.

But if you are planning this after you contact the candidates or in the middle of the hiring process, it will only delay the process and also lead to a bad candidate experience.

2. Use precise job posts

The hiring process is interconnected as we all know. All the factors have to work together and one leads to the other. Once you have planned out how the hiring process is going to be, it’s time to make it official and attract the candidates.

Lack of information leads to a lack of clarity which in turn leads to minimum applications. This is what will happen if you use a job description instead of a job post. A well-written job post will give the candidates all the information they want to know and lead to more application submissions. If your job post is not well written to provide information and at the same time attract candidates, then the number of applications in your inbox will be much less which in turn leads to the hiring process being a long one.

So, write a job post that not only provides information but attracts candidates to your organization.

3. Keep your talent database and pipeline updated

Always keep a candidate database and a talent pipeline and keep updating it. All the candidates that applied at your organization and didn’t make the cut at that time, may fit the current openings. If that is the case having a database of potential candidates is helpful, as you can contact them directly. If you are lucky, some of them may be actively looking look for a new job and may be willing to make the transition to your organization thereby reducing the time to hire. If not they could always spread the news through referrals, which is an added advantage.

Filling the talent pipeline is a hard task, but considering the benefits it offers, it is something that all organizations should look into.

4. Perfect your careers page

We have stressed the importance of the careers page on multiple occasions. The careers page plays a crucial role when it comes to application submissions. The candidates will search for the careers page to dig out more information about your organization and what’s it like working at your place.

If the careers page isn’t optimized well enough to provide information, the ones that the candidates are looking for, then the number of applications you receive will be low. This in turn leads to the hiring process being stretched more than you want it to be. 

5. Ease through the hiring process with a recruitment software

Once the applications start coming in, you realize a few things:

• How do you plan to contact all the candidates? 
• How much time are you going to spend writing emails to let the candidates know of their application status? 
• How are you going to track at which stage they are? 
• How are you going to leave feedback for other recruiters to refer?
• How do you plan to rate candidates for quick reference?
• Can you quickly glance over their resumes?

You could do all these manually, but the time consumed here will be a lot. Thereby reducing your efficiency and greatly affecting the overall time required to complete the hiring process. With our recruitment plugin WPJob Openings, you can use our email templates to contact multiple candidates effortlessly, automatic email alerts to candidates on their application status changes, track and rate candidates, leave notes for other recruiters, and many more features. 

With all the mundane tasks taken care of, you can focus on initiating the interview process as early as possible to seal the deal.

6. Create Precise Application forms

Not too short, and not too long. This should be your motto when it comes to creating the application forms. The lengthier the application forms get, the more the chances of candidates quitting halfway. Go with the required fields – the most important ones, and nothing else.

The goal is to receive applications, not to prevent them. All the other necessary details you want will be mentioned on their resumes. Upon viewing the resume, if more details are needed, you can always contact them.

7. Map out the Interview stages

This stage should’ve already been mapped out in the beginning, before making the job opening official. Establishing a proper pattern would help you in two ways:

• Avoid chaos
• Speed up the hiring process

Split your interview process into multiple stages. Start with the phone screening, assign tasks to the candidates, and then to the final interview. You should have already created a task list to be assigned to the candidates. If you decide to create one after you review the applications, it will only result in the hiring process being delayed as you spend time researching the task, determining the difficulty level, and so on.

The goal should be to have everything prepared beforehand so that the interview stage moves without much delay. An even more important point to focus on is to make sure that there isn’t a huge time gap between one interview stage to the next and always keep the candidates in the loop. Yes, with multiple candidates, it can get overwhelming, but with proper preparation, it is possible to bring down the time gap between each stage.

8. Get the hiring team involved

Get the entire recruitment team onboard and work together. The more help you get, the better workflow control you have. With the entire recruiting managers working together, screening candidates becomes much easier, thereby reducing the time needed to move to the next stage a lot less.

Wrapping Up

Reducing the time to hire is not very difficult. With a proper plan, it is possible to reduce the time needed to complete the hiring process. The lesser time needed to find the right candidate, the better it is.

Frustrated by not getting email notifications from WP Job Openings?

We understand how irritating it can be when you are unable to get/send email notifications. The recruiters may miss new applications, the candidates will be left in the dark without knowing anything about their applications – it will be a total mess. 

We have come across users with these issues in our Support channel and thought we will publish an article in detail so that it will help everyone. 

What causes Email notification issues?

There are several reasons behind this. Let’s look into them one by one and their solutions. 

1. Emails ending up in the Spam folder

Sometimes, WordPress will be sending emails but they may end up in the Spam folder. So before you proceed to do any corrective action, check your Spam folder and ensure that your emails are not there. 

If the emails are in the spam folder, it means your WordPress emails are working fine. Some email clients may categorize emails from WordPress as spam because they’re automated. 

Solution 

Encourage your users to whitelist your site’s email address so they can see your email in their inboxes. They just need to add your email as a contact, which tells mail servers to trust your site’s email.

Also ensure that you are using a professional email. It is better to avoid emails like [email protected], [email protected] to reduce the chances of being assumed as spam.

Also please check the below points specific to WP Job Openings.

1. If the ‘From’ address in the Notifications settings does not match the domain on the hosting account, it can cause issues with email delivery or the mail may be marked as spam.

2. Avoid using the same email addresses for the From and To fields. If not, the email will be automatically marked as spam.

2. Using the same email address in ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields

If you are using the same email address in both fields, you will be in trouble. Some mail clients will mark these emails as a spoof and won’t deliver them to you while some mail clients will mark this as spam and send it to your spam folder. 

This is not actually an issue with our plugin. This is a generic mail issue. 

Solution

Change either ‘From’ or ‘Reply-To’ address. If this doesn’t fix the issue, please check if mails are deliverable to “email ID” with Check & Log Email plugin as we mentioned above. 

3. ‘From’ address does not match the domain on the hosting account

The domain name on the hosting account should be the same as the ‘From’ address. Otherwise, you will get this notification from WP Job Openings:

“The provided ‘From’ email address does not belong to this site domain and may lead to issues in email delivery.”

Solution

Give email IDs that match the domain name you are using in the hosting account. 

4. Using the default PHP mail service

If you are using the default PHP mailer on your WordPress site, you may face issues as several web hosting companies do not have their servers adequately configured to send PHP emails.

How to test if the server is sending Emails?

To check, you can use the free Check & Log Email plugin. Once installed, go to Status and send a test email. You can use the standard headers or use custom headers. 

You will then see a notification. 

Check your inbox for the email. Check your Spam folder too.

Solution

You can use a dedicated plugin for handling the mail. There are plugins like  WP Mail SMTP by WPForms or Stop WP Emails Going to Spam if you want to use the default PHP mail service.

5. Incorrect ‘From’ address

Of course, your emails will not be delivered if the mail ID in the ‘From’ address is wrong. And while you are at it, also make sure the ‘Reply-To’ email ID is correct. 

Solution

Check if the mail ID you have given for the applicant and admin notifications is correct. If not, correct it from Settings>Notifications. 

6. Plugin Conflicts

You may miss email notifications when other third-party plugins conflict with the WP Job Openings plugin. We mostly see this with users having dedicated plugins for sending emails such as WP Mail SMTP and Mailpoet. 

WP Mail SMTP conflict

Email issues occur with this plugin usually because “Force From Email” option under General Settings is checked. Some users find it unable to change ‘From’ email ID. 

Solution

If you want to use the ‘From’ address from notification settings, just turn off “Force From Email” option.

MailPoet conflict

If you are using MailPoet Sending Service, you may find that attachments are no longer displayed and the emails are only sent to the CC address. This issue is even mentioned in this plugin’s documentation. 

Solution

Choose MailPoet > Settings > Send With > Other and configure a mail service with a plugin such as WP Mail SMTP, or you can use the default mail service provided by your hosting provider.

Wrapping up

We have shared some of the causes of email notifications issues usually faced by our users and their solutions. If you are facing any other issues, please let us know in the comments section below and we will get back to you. You can also connect with our support team for solutions to other issues.

The time is here. It’s time to begin the search for the right candidate. But wait, how do you know who will be the perfect fit? Every hiring manager goes through this, regardless of which organization they work for, be it small or large.

Before the search for the right candidate begins, one must have a proper picture of who would fit for the open position as well as with the organization. This is where having a proper Candidate Profile Persona comes into play.

What is a Candidate Profile Persona?

As a recruiter, it is like entering a maze if you don’t have an idea about your ideal candidate. This is where the candidate profile persona plays a crucial role. The candidate profile persona is your guide, the compass that leads you out of the maze, in this situation leads you to the ideal candidate.

A candidate profile persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal candidate and all the qualities, skills, and talents that the candidate should possess. This candidate profile is created after hours of research by the hiring team. A lot of interviews and data analysis go into making the candidate profile persona.

The hiring team has to go through everything, all the aspects like work experience, education, demography details, soft and hard skills, and many more. This is a time-consuming effort, but the results are well worth it.

The Importance of Candidate Profile Persona

The candidate profile personas will ultimately determine the ideal candidate, the job description, and also the job post. Every piece of content that outlines the perfect candidate for the job is the outcome of a successful candidate profile persona operating in the background. The candidate profile persona helps us to reduce our search radius for the right candidate by focusing on certain key areas.

• One cannot simply post a job opening without collecting the relevant information about that particular role.

• Without a candidate persona, how can one determine the years of experience needed for this role or the skills and certifications needed?

Now, because of a proper job description that is the result of a candidate’s profile persona, the candidates themselves can analyze whether they are the perfect fit for this role or not. This in turn reduces the applications that reach the recruiters and all the applications that ultimately make it to the recruiter will be the right ones.

The candidate profile persona also allows the recruiters to know exactly where to source and find the right candidates and also optimize the recruitment process. As different job boards are mainly set up for a particular field, the hiring managers can target those boards to find the ideal candidates.

How to Develop a Candidate Profile Persona

Now that we have covered what a candidate profile persona and its importance is, it is time we take a look at how to create one.

1. Research

So the management tells you that there is an open position and the need to fill the vacancy. So, what do you do? Where do you start? You don’t know anything at this point. Every single detail counts like what the team is expecting and so on.

This is where you start the research. The research first starts within your organization.

Have a discussion with the top-level management and also with the people who are working in the department in which the vacancy has to be filled. The major part of the candidate persona can be collected within an organization itself. The management and other employees will give you an idea about the ideal candidate, the skills, and everything he/she should possess. The most important things to note down are:

• Educational background

The candidates from which educational background will perfectly fit this position or can someone with a different educational background do well and adapt? These questions can be easily answered by the management and coworkers easily.

• Experience required

Is this a high-level post or an open position? To determine this you will have to analyze the job title also. Does the job title mention senior or junior or anything else that might give you a heads-up is always a good start? Also, your team members can provide a concrete answer to the years of experience needed for this job. 

• Additional certifications

Will the candidate need other certifications along with them to be capable of this position? 

• Their current job title

Is the candidate new to this field, are they making a career change or not, or simply looking for a better organization and opportunities? 

• Soft and hard skills

Never overlook the soft and hard skills as they can cause problems down the line. We are looking for someone who is a mix of both, and not just one or half.

• Demography

Everything from age, gender, and income comes under demography.

• Goals and motivation

What they want to achieve in this position, why they are looking for a change, and why they want to work with you. Also what motivates them to perform well and grow. Is it learning new skills, taking up projects, work environment, and so on.

2. Research the current trends

So you have gathered enough intel from within your organization. Now it’s time to do some more work. Is there new any new trend or skill out there that could act as an added advantage in the long run. Search for a similar open position online and see if it aligns with the data you have collected. If you spot something new, not on your checklist talk with the management and other team members to know if this is important and useful in the long run.

3. Time to Create the Actual Candidate Profile Persona

Now that you have everything you need, it is time to combine everything to make sense. Start from the most important ones and move to the rest.

After you have combined all the data you have collected, present it to the team and management and if they give you the thumbs up, it’s time to put the plan into action, time to post an appropriate job post, and find the right candidate.

An Example of a Perfect Candidate Profile Persona

An example of a perfect candidate profile will be like this:

Job Title	Java Script Developer
Educational Background	Engineering
Experience	4 years
Skills	Should have knowledge and experience in Node.js, MySQL, Mongo DB, Express.js, TypeScript, JavaScript Excellent communication skills
Salary Range	$3000-$4000
Interests	Coding libraries, Developing mobile and desktop applications
Goals	Learn new skills Career Growth Ambitious
Motivation	Grow by tackling new challenges Perks and benefits Work Culture

Based on the above, the recruiters can structure the appropriate job description and job post to start the hiring process to find the right candidate. 

What would make the recruitment process simple and efficient after the candidate profile persona is complete is a powerful recruitment plugin like WPJob Openings. The tool allows you to create a career page and post job openings in a flash, provides you with customizable job forms, filter out applications, contact candidates, and more.

Wrapping Up

Every time you go through a job post, remember that a lot of research and hard work went into it. The reason why there is an apt job post and description for each and every job opening is that there exists a candidate profile persona in the background. Candidate profile personas are vital and play an important role in helping organizations always find the perfect candidate.

Organizations always intend to grow and hiring is a usual process that caters to their growth. Most companies now have a career page on their website which makes candidates approach them directly with ease. Now, setting up a career page might look like a task, but here is an easy way to go about it – if your site runs on WordPress, this plugin would help you create a career page without any hassle. 

The plugin is none other than our WP Job Openings – a plugin that enables you to have a career or job listing page on your website within a matter of seconds.

The Need for Career Pages

There are various reasons why a career page is important for your website, which we have discussed earlier. One of the main benefits of having career pages on your website is its utility and efficiency in getting job listings done. You can display job listings directly on your website and the interested candidates can approach you without third-party registration. 

Another great advantage of having a career page on your website is that it brings traffic and lets the visitor go through other content available on your site! Traffic is the key and a career page is a great source to bring that. 

Whatever be your reason, the WPJO plugin allows you to set up the career page without code or editor. This article will help you understand the plugin better and how you can use it to have a thriving career page. 

WP Job Openings Plugin

I am excited to talk about this in-house, gem of a plugin! I see my team, work day in and out to make this plugin efficient and I can’t be prouder! 

So, what exactly is WP Job Openings? It is a simple, yet powerful plugin for your WordPress site to add a career page. It is a great way to drive traffic to your site, and also to display job listings without third-party registration. The plugin comes in two layout styles – grid and list. Both are mobile-friendly, easy to view and completely customisable. 

Some excellent features come with the plugin which include: 

• Easy to set up and use
• Modern Layout Styles
• Unlimited Job Specs
• Clean Design and Functionality
• Unlimited Filtering Options
• Search Functionality
• AJAX Powered Job Listing and Filtering
• Default Form for Application Submission
• Email Notifications
• Application Listings
• Structured for SEO
• WPML Support
• Developer Friendly
• Works With All Top Plugins and Themes

These are all features of our free version! There is a premium/pro version that comes with more interesting features; you can take a look at it if it interests you. 

Here’s the tutorial on how to install and use the WPJO free plugin. We hope this makes your work easier. 

Adding Career Pages to Your Site – Step by Step Tutorial

Step 1: Install and Activate

The first and foremost step is to install and activate the plugin. All you need to do is go to your WordPress website’s admin dashboard, click on the plugins page and find the search field on the top of the page. Type the name of the plugin and once it pops up, install and activate it. 

Step 2: Configure the plugin on the settings page

After installing and activating the plugin, the next step is to configure the plugin according to your liking. For this, you need to go to the settings page right under the Job Opening section on the left side of the dashboard. Under Settings, you will find five options to configure: 

• General 
• Appearance
• Job Specifications
• Form
• Notifications

Let’s go through them quickly one by one.

General 

The ‘General’ tab has all the common configurations for the plugin. You can go through them and make selections as per your job posting requirements – how it can be displayed, performed etc. 

Appearance

Under this tab, you can configure the appearance of the job listings page. There are various filters to choose from, so you can go through them all before you make a final decision. 

Job Specifications

All the job specs can be added and removed under this tab. You can add as many specs as you like, as this tab has the option to add as many as you want. 

Form

There is a built-in form that comes with the plugin and under this tab, you can configure it as per your requirements. 

Notifications

When an applicant applies for a job listed on your site, an in-built notification email will appear on your mailbox. Under the notifications tab, you can configure this and make it the way you like it. 

Step 3: Add a New Job Opening

Once you configure the settings, you are ready to add a new job opening to your career page. Under the Job Opening tab, you will find the ‘New Job Opening’ tab where you can add the new job opening. The job editor will open where you could add a title and the description of the job available.

You can even add an expiration date for the job! 

Once all the specifications are added, click on the ‘Publish’ button and the job opening will appear automatically on the career page. If you

Step 4: View Your Career Page that’s now live

Your career page is now live and you can see how it looks. The page will appear based on your chosen choice – a grid, or a list. To fill up the page, you can add job openings over time. Now, your career page is ready and it will be displayed beautifully on your website!

If you want to make any changes further, you can always go back to the settings page and change as per your requirements. 

View all applications whenever you want!

The WPJO plugin comes with an option to house all the applications submitted to all available job openings in one place. You can scroll down to the Applications tab under the Job Openings tab and you can view the information whenever you want. 

Wrapping Up

Having a career page is a great idea both for your website as well as business. And WP Job Openings will be an excellent addition to your site. If you have any thoughts or queries about the plugin, please feel free to contact us. 

Having a career page on your company website has many advantages that could directly benefit your organization. When searching for a job, coming across a solid career page is considered a valuable resource, agrees 64% of job seekers. The page will not only create a positive impact among your prospective employees but also make your clients understand your business effortlessly. The presence of such a page brings more value to your brand and builds trust in your clients. 

Firstly, What’s a career page? 

A Career page is part of your website where job openings are listed. It could be a single landing page, a microsite, or a hybrid page with details about your company, your values, why your employees love working with you, the skills expected from the new applicants, and what is in store for them.

For me, this information part is of utmost importance as it would help me tremendously to decide whether to ‘Apply’ for the job or not, and I am sure, this would be the deal-breaker for most job seekers too!

Now, let me take you through the importance of a career page on your website in detail.

1. Make Hiring Easy

With a career page on your website, you automatically cut out all the complex situations involved in a hiring process. You present the best version of yourself and let the job seekers find what is suitable for them and apply accordingly. There is no complicated process here and everything is transparent between you and the job seeker. 

2. Tell Your Story to The Job Seekers, The Way You Want

Your site’s career page is the first place where your potential employees come in touch with you. Hence, it has to be extremely impressed with all the details they would like to know about you.

You can tell your story the way you want here, with all the important information. This page is the best place to present the most stunning version of your story!

3. Save Time and Money

Usually, when you are looking for hiring someone new, the organic process is to advertise through online portals or newspapers. However, these may cost you money and a lot of time in receiving applications. With a career page on your website, this process is made easy and applicants can reach you directly through your site.

4. Increase in Organic Web Traffic

When a job seeker is looking for a job, they usually get into the search engine and search for the industry and job title. If you have a career page with SEO-friendly titles and keywords, it will only increase the web traffic to your site organically and keep you on top of the search results. 

5. Indirectly Boost your Business

From a client’s point of view, if an organization has an active career page, it means the business is steadily growing and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to associate with them. Their trust increases and they are ready to do business with organizations they have faith in. This only helps in the growth of your organization! 

6. Engage Visitors

Once you ensure that your career page has engaging content, it will automatically serve as the best platform to engage visitors. Your story will be well explained without putting in extra effort and you will have smooth hiring as well. 

7. Improve Brand Image

The best talents in the industry most likely will have their job preferences set right. When they land on your career page they find your brand reliable, resulting in the retention of the site visitor. This also means you get to hire the right people for your organization at no extra cost. 

8. Track Visitors to Your Career Pages

Since the career page is built into your organization’s website, visitor statistics can be easily tracked including demographics, locations, engagement data, and so on. These metrics will help you in customizing your website for your audience. 

9. Your HR will Thank You Immensely

With a career page on your website, the life of your HR is made easy! Otherwise, they will have to go into multiple online and offline portals, respond to umpteen inquiries, and spend a lot of time on emails and phone calls. A career page will help you procure as many potential candidates as possible and also allow you to choose the best among the lot. 

10. Future Possibilities

Sometimes people will randomly land on your career page, and check out your entire website without an intention to seek jobs. However, with an excellent career page, you can bring them back to your website, when they are actually looking for a job! 

11. Build A Great Organization with the Career Page

By now, you might have understood that a career page can help you hire the best candidates in the industry for your organization, and help you build it slow and steady. With a simple plugin like WP Job Openings, you can create a career page on your website at a reasonable cost. The tool allows you to list jobs on your website and manage it easily from your dashboard. 

Wrapping Up

An efficient career page will be easy to find, have all the details of the organization, have jobs listed seamlessly, and help job seekers make wise decisions. It improves your relationship with your clients and also brings in excellent talents to your organization. Together, you can build your business and take it to greater heights. 

We are happy to introduce our new WP Job Openings Add-on – User Access Control. It is the third add-on we have developed for WP Job Openings. 

Request from our users

Several of our users had contacted us asking for a solution to manage and restrict the capabilities of HR personnel managing the recruitment. This feature was especially significant when a company had several HR people handling recruitment. 

We felt that there was a demand for this feature amongst select users; thus, there was no point in adding this to our main plugin and bloating it. So we decided to introduce it as an add-on.

User Access Control Add-on

This new add-on is the perfect solution to manage the capabilities of your recruitment team. For example, if you want to limit the edit access of a recruiter or give access to applications from a particular job location, this add-on will help you. 

WP Job Openings gives full access to recruitment-related things for the HR user role. If you wanted to customize that, then this add-on is for you. 

Features

• Create new user roles for managing jobs and listings. 
• Edit or restrict the capabilities of the existing HR role.
• Restrict user access to own job listings and applications.
• Restrict user access by Job Specifications or locations.

Who will find the User Access Control Add-on useful?

This add-on will be useful for you if you have these requirements:

• Create custom roles for recruiters with limited access to job listings and applications.
• Restrict an HR user from accessing WPJO settings and configurations.
• Restrict access to job listings and applications based on locations or specific job categories for your recruiters.
• Restrict access for a recruiter only to their own job listings and applications.
• Limit edit access of a recruiter.

What is next?

You can definitely expect more goodies from us in the near future. We are working hard to make WPJO the best recruitment tool for WordPress websites. You can join us by sharing your suggestions, feedback, and feature requests here. Also, drop us a hi on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, here we are! Another brand new update, with some most-sought fresh features 🎉

Application Status

The option to change the status of an application was introduced as a feature in our Pro version from early on. By default, all the applications are given the ‘New‘ status. You could change that to four other statuses we have shipped with the plugin by default – ‘In Progress‘, ‘Shortlisted‘, ‘Selected‘, and ‘Rejected‘.

You can use the application status option to manage your applications effectively by putting them on different statuses. The option lets you mark the qualified applications as ‘In Progress‘ or ‘Shortlisted‘ and unqualified ones as ‘Rejected‘. You can also mark the hired applicants as ‘Selected‘ to identify them easily.

For the basic application management system it was, these statuses that came by default with the plugin were more than enough. As the system grew, many small and medium companies switched from their existing, complex Application Tracking Systems and Recruitment Tools to our simple plugin to make hiring easier. We have been contacted by many such users to customize the plugin to add more application statuses and workflows. We have provided them with the customizations they required to meet their goals.

We found an increasing demand for having the option to add and manage application statuses from the dashboard and we have just added that as a feature in the version 3.2.0 release!

✅ Custom Application Statuses

As the beginning of our next big step toward the future of the plugin, we have added a new tab on our settings page – ‘Advanced‘. Under this tab, now you can add new application statuses and edit the existing ones and even reorder them using the simple drag and drop interface.

Any change you make here will be reflected though out the system in all the places application status is used – the application listing table, application detail page, the dashboard, export data, etc.

A closer look at the feature

As you can see in the screenshot, when you are adding and editing a status, you get the option to change the status label and its color. The color will be used to represent the status in the applications table and charts in the overview tab.

And yes, the checkbox.

It’s another feature that was requested by many of our users.

✅ Automatic Email Notifications on Status Change

WPJO already had the option to send automated notifications to applicants that successfully submits an application. It also has the option for admins to set up templates and send out emails to applicants individually from the application detail page. One thing that is missing was the feature to send automated email notifications to applicants when their application status changes.

This update addressed that gap as well.

You have to set up the email templates under WP Job Openings > Settings > Notifications > Templates, check the option ‘ Automatically send the notification on status change‘, select the desired template from the dropdown, and hit the save button!

Be careful while adding and selecting the email notification templates though. The wrong email for an application status could confuse the hell out of your applicants.

✅ Country Code Selection for Phone Number Field

No big deal, but a good-to-have feature some of our users requested. You have to enable the option in the phone field settings from your form builder. You can also select the default country to be shown in the form.

✅ ‘Position Filled’ Status for Job listings

The new ‘Filled’ status for job listings will help you differentiate the positions that are filled and open.

We are not done yet

There are several other improvements and fixes rolled out with this update. The update is being rolled out to all the Pro subscribers.

What keeps us going is your support, kind words, and criticisms. We are always open to suggestions and feedback! If you have a feature request, feedback, or any suggestions, please submit them here. We would love to hear from you.

Please do subscribe to our newsletter to get updates and offers. 

V 3.2.0: Full Changelog

• Added: Advanced settings to manage application status (Settings > Advanced) with the option to send notification automatically on status change.
• Added: HTML editor support for notifications.
• Added: Country-based input option for phone fields.
• Added: ‘Filled’ admin filter and state for job listings.
• Fixed: ‘Disable Form’ issue in application shortcode.
• Improved: Form builder error handling.
• Improved: Elementor popup support for the application form.
• Dev: Repeater field support (programmatically) for the application form.
• Dev: Hooks to customize the export page.
• Dev: Hooks to customize job display options.
• Other minor bug fixes and style improvements.

WP Job Openings Pro V 3.2.0 is being rolled out to all the Pro customers. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and improvements.

We are introducing a most sought-after feature – Restrict duplicate applications. 

The Issue of Duplicate Applications

Some job seekers apply multiple times to a job posting. Often they do it out of desperation, thinking it would improve their chances or because they have no way of knowing that their application was successfully submitted the first time. But it only serves to make the lives of recruiters harder. Finding and removing duplicate applications was a real headache for our clients and they were requesting a solution. 

We decided to tackle the issue and soon zeroed into these factors in our brainstorming sessions.

• Users should be able to identify duplicates quickly without any complicated entanglements like authentication and OTP
• The potential fix should not be cookie-based as it is less secure and will not be effective all the time.
• Candidates should be assured that their application was successful and thus need not apply again.

 Well, now say goodbye to duplicate applications. We are addressing this issue in WP Job Openings Pro 3.1.0! 🎉

The Solution

We have now added a checkbox to activate the new feature under WordPress Dasboard > Job Openings > Settings > Forms > General 

If the option is selected, the plugin will validate each application by email and phone number and restrict duplicate submissions. 

This option will be enabled by default for all new Pro users. Existing users will have to enable this option manually to be able to prevent duplications. 

How We Fixed It

We now validate the applications with the email address and phone number. When a candidate tries to submit an application, the plugin will check for previous applications with the same email ID or phone number. If such an application is found, the candidate will get a message indicating that they have already applied for the job. (Yes, the message can be customized too)

Other Changes In V3.1.0

• Added: Shortcodes for Jobs count and Job Specifications (Settings > Shortcodes).
• Added: Elementor popup support for form shortcode.
• Improved: Form builder error handling.
• Dev: Added hooks to customize administrative pages.

More Updates Are On The Way!

We are working to make the plugin more fascinating. We are fixing issues and working on some more amazing features. If you have any issue that’s bothering you or you would like a new cool feature, head to our roadmap and submit them. 

Most companies are winding down for the holidays, and here we are releasing a brand new version of WP Job Openings and Pro. We have released version 3.0 of the free version 2 weeks ago and just rolling out version 3.0 of the Pro version this week.

Since the beginning, we have strived our best to keep the plugin improved in every single update, adding more value for our users. We actively listen to our users and release updates quite regularly. This is our most exciting update for the plugins yet. 

Your favorite Job Listing & Recruitment plugin is better than ever!

There are significant code improvements and UI improvements for both the plugins with some brand new most-sought features.  

WP Job Openings 3.0 (Free Version)

Version 3.0 is our most exciting update yet, with some significant UI improvements and new features like a dashboard to get a cockpit view of everything happening with your recruitment, new pagination options, and a much better job specifications management module. 

WP Job Openings Pro  3.0

The Pro is even more powerful with extra features for the newly introduced dashboard, multiform support, advanced export options, etc.

✅ Dashboard / Overview page 

In general, the dashboard is the most noticeable new thing in the update. The pro comes with an additional widget in the dashboard – a doughnut chart for analyzing the applications by their status. Also, you will get  Month, Week, and Day-based filters for the Applications Analytics widget. 

We have some ideas to make the dashboard more powerful with some:

✅ Multi-form support

We have wanted to add this as a feature for a long time. WP JO Pro already supports replacing the default form with any custom form. But we used to have only a universal form for all the job listings. This update changes that. 

Now you can create multiple forms as per your requirement using our form builder and use them in the job listings as you like. Notification options for the forms also can be handled individually from the form builder.  

✅ Export Applications

The new export screen lets you export applications based on different combinations.

✅ Pagination

Added number based pagination

More features

• UI Improvements
• Order by and Order support for job listing shortcode (Settings > Shortcodes).
• Option to mark a job position filled
• Options to change job detail strings (Settings > Appearance > Change Strings > Job Detail Strings)
• Unicode character support for application print feature

What keeps us going is your support, kind words, and criticisms. We are always open to suggestions and feedback!! If you have a feature request, feedback, or any suggestions, please submit them here. We would love to hear from you.

Please do subscribe to our newsletter to get updates and offers. 

Full Changelog

WP Job Openings 3.0

• Admin UI improvements.
• Job listing UI improvements. The template file needs to be updated if overridden in the theme.
• Added: Overview page with support for Applications Analytics widget, Get Started widget, Recent Applications widget, Open Positions widget, and Your Listings widget.
• Added: Multiple pagination support – Classic or Modern.
• Fixed: ‘Add New’ button for applications being displayed for Multisite network.
• Fixed: Issue in removing duplicate job specification options.
• Fixed: Email digest from address is not the same as the mail address for admin notification.
• Improved: Admin dashboard widget.
• Improved: Job Specifications settings.
• Improved: HR user capabilities.
• Dev: Deprecated job listing hooks.
• Dev: Deprecated recent jobs widget hooks.
• Dev: Hook to override the allowed HTML for the form.
• Dev: Hook to customize expired job content.
• Code improvements.
• Other minor bug fixes.

WP Job Openings PRO 3.0

• Admin UI improvements.
• Added: Multiple Forms Support (Settings > Form > Form Builder).
• Added: Order by and Order support for job listing shortcode (Settings > Shortcodes).
• Added: Applications by Status Overview widget.
• Added: Month, Week, and Day-based filters for Applications Analytics widget.
• Added: Position Filled feature.
• Added: Options to change job detail strings (Settings > Appearance > Change Strings > Job Detail Strings).
• Added: Export Applications by Job Listing or Application Form.
• Added: Unicode character support for application print feature.
• Fixed: Conflict with Yoast SEO plugin, resulting in blank or duplicate applications.
• Fixed: Placeholder not working in the application form.
• Improved: Content handling based on user capabilities.
• Dev: Improved the hook to customize the print styles for applicant details.
• Code improvements.
• Other minor bug fixes.

WP Job Openings Pro 3.0 is now available. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and improvements.

WordPress powers over 43% of websites on the internet and the power behind this juggernaut are the vibrant community. Yes, this open-source platform thrives and is on a roll due to this amazing community. And we are proud to say that we too are part of this community and we are diligently contributing our share too. 

Our Love for WordPress 

Right from its inception, Awsm Innovations always had a fascination for WordPress. Our core development team today boasts of having the coveted WordPress Core Contributor badges. 

We strongly believe in giving back to the community and have always paid our dues. We have pledged our resources for the Five for the Future initiative, and financially supported Big Orange Heart and the PHP Foundation.

And this year we came across another worthy movement – WPGivesAHand.

“WordPress Gives A Hand” Movement

WPGivesAHand is a WordPress-wide charity movement created by friends from across the WordPress community and makes donations on special events from all over the world. For Christmas, all the WordPress companies/developers that have joined this movement will contribute a portion of their product sales between December 20 and 26th, 2021 towards charity. 

We couldn’t help but join this movement when we came to know about this noble venture. We will donate 15% of the sales revenue from WP Job Openings to WP Gives A Hand, which will be used for the Hope Community Village, Kerala, India.

Hope Community Village offers long-term family care to orphan and destitute children, by giving them a loving home with a mother, family, education, and opportunities. They help the children in need to build their lives again by giving them a home and a family. 

We believe children are the future and thus it is our responsibility to ensure their wellbeing. We are only happy to make a contribution that will help build a better tomorrow. 

How to join us?

If you like to join us in becoming part of a worthy cause, you can purchase our WP Job Openings from here any time between December 20 and 26th, 2021. You can also spread the word about this movement by including the hashtag #wpgivesahand in your social media posts. 

We really hope you will join us for the celebrations!