How to Build a Job Board Website like Glassdoor and Indeed

Are you dreaming of creating a job board website that can compete with the likes of Glassdoor and Indeed? It's a daunting task, but with our comprehensive guide, you'll learn how to create a job board website that stands out from the crowd.

In this article, we'll answer all the questions that come to your mind while creating a job board website. From understanding the competitive landscape and identifying the core features of successful job boards to finding ways to attract traffic and exploring the technical aspects of development, we've got you covered.

We'll also take you on a journey of discovery, exploring the strategies and tactics that made Glassdoor and Indeed such a success. Our goal is to show you how to apply those same principles to your own business, whether you're a startup or an established company.

At Greenice, we have a vast experience of building job board websites and we are happy to share it with you! So, if you're ready to take your job board website to the next level, sit back, relax, and let's dive into the world of creating a job board website like Glassdoor or Indeed.

Indeed vs Glassdoor: Who Is Better?

Choosing between the platforms, which one do people prefer? Let’s look at the numbers:

Sources: SimilarWeb, Indeed, Glassdoor

Indeed.com was founded in 2004 by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan. Today it is the biggest job board in the world, used in 60 countries, and available in 28 languages.

One of its major rivals, Glassdoor, started as a company review website and gradually incorporated a job board.

Both websites are now owned by the same Japanese company, Recruit Holdings. That fact probably makes them partners that can close one another’s gaps rather than competitors. Generally, recruiters go to Glassdoor for more high-skilled specialists, while Indeed is used when someone needs to find a role quickly.

But what about other big and small guys in the jobs sector?

Competitive Landscape

Every time we start researching an industry, it is always interesting to look through and segment the existing companies. This article is no exception. The job search boards are categorized:

• By area: local (HeadHunter) and international (JobisJob)
• By level of skill requirements: senior-level (Ladder) and any (Monster)
• By specialization: general and specialized

How Do Job Boards Make Money?

According to the survey of job board owners, duration-based job postings are by far the greatest source of revenue for job board websites. Duration-based job postings are job listings that are live for 30 to 60 days. Employers pay for them to reach qualified candidates who are actively seeking opportunities. These postings attract a higher quality of applicant and reduce unqualified applicants, saving time and money in the hiring process.

There are also other ways to monetize a job board website, such as with duration-based subscriptions, cost-per-click job postings, candidate screening services, and cost-per-application among others. Here are the main revenue sources of job boards:

JobBoardDoctor

So, let’s summarize all commonly used revenue-generation methods of sites like Indeed.com and Glassdoor:

• Job Posting

This is one of the most common ways to get revenue. But every site sets its own rules.

For example, Indeed allows us to post an unlimited number of free ads, or paid, like at Glassdoor which provides only three free job posts for seven days and then charges from $255 (depending on the number of posts) every month for displaying these posts.

If you start a new job board, it is better to begin with free and unlimited job postings to quickly grow the audience. Another way to monetize job postings is to charge either per click or per applicant. This way employers will post listings for free and pay only when you get some interest from potential employees.

• Membership

This may turn into a sustainable source of income. Instead of just taking a fee for a listing, you can better propose a monthly subscription that will include a definite set of options, like X resumes an employer can access per month, X job listings per month, access to educational resources concerning recruiters/employees, a newsletter with latest resume postings.

• Premium Package

This means that most of the functionality goes for free, but if users need advanced features they have to pay for the upgrading of their subscription.

For example, the resume search feature is free of charge at Indeed and their users may search for job seekers without payments, but to contact those who did not apply for jobs they are required to buy a monthly subscription for around $100 to $250 for 30 to 100 contacts.

However, this option can be profitable only when your database counts several thousand resumes to make a value for customers to pay for this. Glassdoor does not have a resume search option at all, they also provide premium features like the option to customize Company Profiles to better express their mission, remove competitor ads from the company profile, get access to analytics, or highlight reviews.

• Sponsored Post

When an employer wants to have their ads better displayed, they may pay for sponsored highlighting. Posters may either regulate their budget from between 10 cents and $1.50 pay-per-click to $5/slot/day at Indeed or buy a package as required on Glassdoor. Also, an additional payment can be taken for promoting the job posts on social media and partner websites.

• Career Services Fees

Many job search websites are more than just job boards, but also provide career services like writing or enhancing applicant resumes and cover letters, giving them useful tips on how to pass interviews, etc. These services may start at $200 for a single resume. This is a good option for niche job boards, but you have to be ready to have a career development specialists on board to fulfill these tasks.

How to Build a Job Search Website

To create a job search website, you need to consider four things:

Let’s take a closer look at these.

1. Core Features of Job Boards like Glassdoor and Indeed

Creating a personal website for job search takes into account the different types of user needs. A job board website represents a two-fold service:

• On the one hand, there are companies and recruiters who aim to find and hire proper employees with definite skills and experience. For that, they need to announce their open positions or get access to resume databases.
• On the other hand, there are job seekers who want to get a new job. For that they need to find open positions and be able to apply for them, showing that their skills match what is required for the job.

Minding these requirements, we can create a scope of core features you need to include in MVP to create a job board website.

Company features:

1. Job Posting

A company or recruiter should be able to post a job that will be shown to job seekers. Usually, job websites provide job posters with a wizard form to quickly and easily create a job ad. The form may include a job location, position name, and description. Whether the service collects payment for postings or not, the billing details may be asked. Depending on your business model, you may different options for a recruiter for promoting their ad.

2. Company Profile

This is a page that contains company and job descriptions and currently open positions with the ability to apply. Here you can also include reviews of former employees that are aimed to help applicants know more about working conditions.

3. Employer Dashboard This is analytics for HR and recruiters that allows them to:

• View the stats of opened, paused, or closed jobs.

• Edit the details of their jobs or change the set budget of a promotion campaign.

• Make notes about candidates and set their status as screened, interviewed, rejected, hired, etc.
• Forward an applicant’s resume to other decision-makers in the company.
• View the statistics of ad performance (views, clicks, and applies).

4. Resume Search This is one of the features that differentiates Indeed from Glassdoor and many other job boards. It means that Indeed job posters can view all resumes for free but cannot contact them directly without paying a monthly fee. They need to pay $100 per month to contact up to 30 job seekers and $250 for 100 contacts. This feature allows reaching out to applicants' top talent workers who did not apply either because they did not see the post or did not pay attention to it.

Applicant’s features:

1. Job Search

Visitors should be able to easily search for jobs. This process can be facilitated with filters to narrow down the search. Possible filters are: by date (to show the freshest first), job type (full-time/part-time/contract), salary range, location, experience level, and company.

2. Create a Resume

The same way companies post their job ads, job seekers can also post a resume for recruiters or send their resume to vacant positions. To create a resume, Indeed and similar websites allow applicants to either fill in the website resume form or upload a document. When the applicant uploads a resume it is a nice-to-have feature for converting a document into editable forms. This allows candidates to change information on-site without needing to re-load the resume.

3. Applicant Profile As soon as a user creates a resume, they should be able to get access to the User Profile. There they can create and store more than one resume for different jobs and set the visibility options (some resumes may be archived, hidden, or in draft mode). Other stored data may include contact info, a dashboard with statistics on replies from recruiters, privacy settings, and communication channels for messaging with employers.

2. Be different from others

Nowadays, it is not enough just to build a job search website. You need to cover other inner recruiting needs to meet the audience's demands. For example, you can find a unique value that will help your recruiters and job seekers streamline the process of hiring.

Recruiters are willing to look through as many candidates as possible to minimize the risks of bad hires that cost thousands of dollars. 

Here are some ideas of advanced features that can increase the value of your job board:

1. Application Tracking System

This feature allows recruiters to track applicants' progress on the way to employment like passing screening tests, interviews, and providing required documents.

For example, for one of our key clients, we created a Human Resource Management System, of which one of the core features was ATS. The system allows recruiters to move an applicant through the step-by-step process of hiring. In their profile, an applicant has to perform certain actions like filling in forms, passing the interview, getting through the training, signing the agreements, uploading all required documents. The system allows them to track when each step is completed, notifying the HR manager and automatically moving the applicant further to the next step. In large companies, such a tool is an indispensable time-saver.

Some platforms have this feature built-in while others prefer to integrate with third-party providers. One of the ready-built ATS services that provide an API integration is Workable, a flexible, mobile-friendly platform.

2. Video Interviewing

47% of 506 surveyed companies use video interviewing to speed up the hiring process, especially when they deal with candidates who aren’t local.

Such a feature allows one to interview candidates for different positions before asking them to come to the office. This can again be useful for large and busy companies and companies that suffer high employee turnover.

We created such a feature for Skillheart, one of our clients from Norway, as part of a more complex solution consisting of an interviewing tool, question bank, and talent bank. All these features prevent losing a valuable applicant and make it possible to contact them in the future when new job positions open. Another benefit of such a tool is eliminating the stress for the candidate and giving recruiters a chance to watch the video at a comfortable time and as many times as needed. Moreover, it is a time-saving option for all participants, especially for interviewing candidates from a distant location or even a different time zone without needing to go to the office.

3. CV Scraping

A CV scraping tool as a part of your job board will save a lot of time for recruiters - especially those who deal with large volumes of candidate applications daily. CV scraping allows them to automatically go through CVs for matching their skills to open positions. Look at such services as Hireability and Textkernel to get inspiration for this approach.

4. Assessments

Do you think is it helpful to have skills assessment results even before interviewing a person? This way you aren’t spending time on assessment creation and evaluation. Just see the candidate's result and decide if it is enough for your position.

Indeed offers to require all candidates to pass the assessments as soon as they create a resume. I tested this feature as well to understand how it works. A candidate gets to choose a quiz out of more than 30 assessments created by specialists. It is required to give answers to a set of questions in a definite timeframe. After that, the results are displayed as part of the candidate’s profile and they can decide to show them to the employer or not.

Indeed says that this tool saves up to 30% of recruiters’ time to hire. Moreover, assessments work as proof of the skills declared in the resume.

3. Find ways to attract traffic

Starting a job board website, you should also consider the audience question. Whom should you attract first - companies or job seekers? Ask yourself: why should people waste their time posting jobs and resumes on your platform when there is nobody?

There are several tips that may help you attract an audience at the first stage:

• Make it free of charge or very cheap compared to others. Those who are interested in finding candidates or jobs will take the chance to use all possible platforms, especially if they are not required to pay. You can provide a Freemium business model - giving a core part of the functionality for free and providing advanced features by subscription.
• Start with a niche. If you know that there is a demand for particular specialists in the area you are focusing on, you may create online job application categories for medical, education, or aviation staff. People of the profession and companies interested in specialists will be interested in visiting your portal more than other general websites.
• Cooperate with other platforms. While you do not have your own job postings, you can borrow from others. For example, participate in affiliate programs of large job boards that use all possible channels to promote their ads even through other job boards. People will see that you have a database of listings and start posting right on your website. When you get a certain amount of your own users you will be able to boost the traffic by allowing job aggregators like Indeed to scrape your website. Thus, they will bring traffic to your site. A good example is LinkUp, one of the fast-growing job boards that index millions of jobs directly from employer websites. Such an approach also contributes to the trustworthiness of the website as it scrapes reputable resources.

4. Hire a team to develop your job board website

Finding the right team to build your job board website is crucial for its success. Here are some steps you can take to make sure you find a great team:

1. Look for experience: The first thing you should check is whether the team you're considering has already built a job board website. If they have, take a look at it and see how it functions. This will give you an idea of what to expect from them.
2. Check their reputation: Look at the team's ratings and reviews on third party platforms like Clutch, GoodFirms, or Upwork. This will give you an idea of their reputation in the industry and whether they have a history of delivering quality work.
3. Get an estimate: Ask the team for an estimate of the time and cost involved in building your job board website. This will give you an idea of whether they are within your budget and whether their timeline matches your expectations.
4. Ask for references: Finally, ask the team if they can provide you with references. This will give you an opportunity to speak to their previous clients and get a sense of their experience working with the team.

Remember, building a job board website is a significant investment, so take the time to find the right team to help you bring your vision to life.

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Job Board Website

In this section of the article, we'll discuss the cost of building a job board website. There are two options for developing your site – you can either develop an MVP from scratch or use a white-label solution.

Both options have their pros and cons. Custom development provides full flexibility, unlimited scalability, increased data security, code ownership, and integration with any third parties. However, the price is often high at the start, while paying for itself in the long term.

On the other hand, a white-label solution allows you to reduce costs while still having full freedom for remodeling the platform. You can take the solution structure, configure a server and database for it, rebuild existing features according to your business needs, and make necessary integrations. This approach makes the price much lower.

For a custom MVP, the cost starts from $15K, which will take 4-6 weeks to develop. Developing a job board website based on a white-label solution starts at $5k, which will take 2-3 weeks to develop.

Both estimates include the work of an entire team: project manager, team leader, developer, and QA engineer.

At the end of the day, the choice of which option is best for you will depend on your unique situation. We'll be happy help you make the right decision for your business needs.

Our Experience Building Job Board Websites

Our team at Greenice has had the pleasure of working on a variety of job board websites from different industries. Here are some of our notable projects:

• 4TradesOnly: We built an easy-to-use platform for searching for construction work, hiring construction professionals, or looking for construction and office equipment buyers. Our client was thrilled with the outcome, and you can check out their review on Clutch.
• BEWM: We helped develop a healthcare job board for US medical professionals and organizations. Healthcare employers can post jobs for free and pay only for qualified candidates. The website supports geographic job searches and provides a multitude of other filters. Our client was so impressed with our work that they left us a review on GoodFirms.
• Dentaway: We had the opportunity to upgrade and maintain a job board website for dentists. Dentists can use this platform to find long-term or temporary jobs and manage their invoices and appointments. At the same time, dental practices leverage Dentaway to fill their open positions quickly.

At Greenice, we take pride in our work and always strive to go above and beyond for our clients. If you're looking for a team to help you build a job board website that stands out from the crowd, look no further than Greenice.

How to Apply This to Your Business

Despite the fact that there are thousands of job boards in the world, you can always try to find an unmet need and provide your solution.

As you see from the article, at the beginning of your route, you do not need to have a lot of features, and they are quite standard. Start a job search website with MVP to prove your idea and focus on marketing and bringing in traffic. As you get more and more impact you will be able to improve the platform with advanced features that will allow you to scale up for larger companies and more niches.

At Greenice, we have experience devloping not only job board websites by also HRMS, ATS, and Talent Bank systems that reliably serve their owners' needs.