Job board builder: post roles yourself, take applications by form, and know where it stops
Many niche job boards start as one person curating roles by hand: a recruiter's own vacancies, a community's list of jobs, a sector newsletter with a careers page. Anticode can build that kind of job board as a real, published app. You post and edit roles in a CMS collection, visitors search and filter them, and applications reach you through a form. What it can't do is let employers sign in, post their own listings or pay for them.
Two kinds of job board
| Curated (owner posts) | Self-serve (employers post) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who adds jobs | You, from your own dashboard | Employers, through their own accounts |
| Money | Sponsorship, recruitment fees or none | Paid listings, featured slots, subscriptions |
| Quality control | Every role checked before it's live | Moderation queue, spam and scam checks |
| Applications | Come to you, and you pass them on | Go to each employer, often through their own system |
| What Anticode covers | The whole thing, as a published app | A prototype of the employer side only |
Curated boards are underrated. A hand-picked list of thirty good roles in, say, conservation or games audio is more useful to its readers than a thousand scraped ads, and it's far easier to run.
The fields a listing needs
Job seekers filter before they read, so structured fields matter more than prose. A collection called jobs might hold:
- Title and organisation, kept separate so people can search by either.
- Location and a remote field (on site, hybrid, remote within a country, fully remote).
- Salary range as two numbers plus a currency and period. Listings without pay get fewer serious applicants, and in some places pay transparency is a legal requirement.
- Contract type: permanent, fixed term, freelance, part time.
- Closing date, so the app can hide expired roles automatically and show "closes in four days".
- Summary and a longer description with responsibilities and requirements.
- How to apply: through your form, or a link to the employer's own application page.
How the published app works
Describe it like this: "A job board for UK charity communications roles. Jobs come from a CMS collection with title, organisation, location, remote, salary minimum and maximum, contract type, closing date, summary and description. A search box and filters for remote, contract type and salary. A job page with an apply form asking for name, email, the role, a link to a CV or portfolio and a short cover note. Hide roles past their closing date. A saved jobs list kept in the visitor's browser."
The roles live in the project's CMS collection, which you edit in the Anticode dashboard; the app reads them when the page is served and renders the list, so adding a role doesn't need a rebuild. Read-only is the important word: visitors can see roles but can't add or change them. Saved jobs and recent searches stay in each visitor's own browser.
Applications go through the app's contact form. Name, email and a message are required, and any extra fields you ask for, such as the role and a CV link, are added to the message. Each one arrives by email and in your Anticode inbox, and form connectors can copy it to Slack, Airtable or a Google Sheet so you can track who applied for what. Forms can't take file uploads, so ask for a link to a CV rather than the file itself.
Where it stops
- No employer accounts. Employers can't sign in, post, edit or close their own listings. You can take their details through an enquiry form and add the role yourself.
- No paid listings. The app can't take payment. You can link a "post a job" button to a checkout link from your own payment provider, then add the role by hand once it's paid.
- No candidate accounts. Job seekers can't create profiles, upload CVs or track their applications across devices.
- No job alerts by email sent from the app. A newsletter form can collect addresses for a weekly email you send yourself.
- No feeds from other job sites; every role is one you entered.
If the plan is a self-serve marketplace with employer accounts and paid posts, use the app as a prototype of that side and look at dedicated job board software, or a custom build such as the marketplace prototype page describes. For hiring at a single company rather than a board, see the careers page and applicant tracking pages.
Questions people ask
Can a job board builder like this take CV uploads?
No. Forms have no file uploads, so ask applicants for a link to their CV or portfolio.
How do I add a new job?
Add an entry to the jobs collection in your dashboard. The published board shows it the next time the page loads.
Can employers pay to post?
Not inside the app. Link to a checkout from your own payment provider and post the role yourself once it's paid.
Will expired jobs disappear on their own?
Yes, if you ask the app to hide roles past their closing date. They stay in your collection until you delete them.