How to create a job board using Airtable

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A lot has changed since we wrote this article in 2020. For instance, Airtable has its own automation! Check out our new tutorial

Thinking about creating a job board for your niche? Or have you identified a field you think could use with some help for increased employment? A survey by Allegis reported that the internet is where people are most commonly looking for jobs so if you're reading this, you're already off on the right foot.

Now, figuring out how to build your own job board can be overwhelming when giants like Indeed, Glassdoor and Seek exists, but let's start small. You can build your own with Pory.io using our job template made with Airtable.

This article will teach you

how to create your own job board using Airtable on Pory
how to integrate your job board with other cool web tools (Slack, Twitter) using Zapier

When you're done, you should have a little something that looks like this demo:

Okay, if I've still got you here, I think that means you're ready to begin creating your own job board with us so let's get started.

Creating your site in 6 steps

Hit Create Site on your homepage
Name your domain
Select our job board template and click Next after the template has been added to your Airtable workspace.

In API documentation, select the Base of the template you just cloned

Insert the base ID of the selected base, "Pory Job Template"

I know this looks a little intimidating if you don't understand most of it but the ID of the base highlighted is what we are after. Don't sweat the rest!

Your Pory.io home page should look a little something like this. Voilà! You've created your site.

Now let's open up the site we just created by clicking on the edit icon and selecting View data to see how the site connects to Airtable.

You should see 3 tables inside the template:

site-content: the table with all the job listings displayed on your site
Filters: the list of filter options used to filter things like location and position type
Posted jobs: jobs submitted by users that aren't publicly available yet

With this in mind, we can begin creating the following features for your board! 🔥

A submission form (for people to submit new job listings)
A subscription form (for users wanting to receive e-mail updates)
A live chat bot (for enquiry support)
Analytics (for a better understanding of your users)

Some bonus bits to add:

Need notifications on the go? - Integrate your site with your Slack channel so you and your team can receive notifications.
Thinking of growing a following on Twitter? - Integrate your site with Zapier, it'll post new jobs for ya.

Creating a submission form on Airtable

Easy peasy, let me show you.

Head over to our Posted Jobs table and select the Submit a job form view over on the left. This is the form we'll use to allow users to submit new job listings, so go ahead and edit the field names to fit your platform needs.

Next, you want to embed this form you've created to your site. Click the Share form button on the top left hand corner and copy the Embed Code in the new window that pops up:

Setting up filters

Return to your site editor and Edit the top section your form is in. Paste the embedded form code you've copied into the right hand panel, under the "Airtable" tab.

Filters for the job board can be configured in the "Filters" table. Below, we've used popular ones, "Location" and "Position" in the columns Filter 1 and Filter 2 respectively.

Here's a link to more filter help from our team.

Creating a subscription form - for all your exciting newsletters and updates!

First, log into your MailChimp account and create your Sign Up form from the menu bar up top.

For embedded forms, copy your list URL from the embeddable code. We only want the url i.e. https://pory.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=e52be06a5c33aaf4a761ace7c&id=f7ac927416

Back onto your Pory.io site,

Scroll down to the bottom of the site editor and hit Edit at the top right hand corner of the last section.

Link your MailChimp subscription e-mail here, remember to update and save these changes when you're done!

You can also save this quick link from our support page here.

Adding a live chat for your site (Pro feature)

Live chat functions readily offer support to your users, preventing them from feeling that awful dread when you can't find what you need on a site. Among plenty of other advantages of a live chat, it's one of the easiest ways to enhance a user's experience on your platform. It is also one of the quickest methods of customer service.

We've got two chat bots integrated with Pory.io, Drift and Crisp. They are found on in the "Live Chat" section of the left tool bar, pick one that best suits your site's needs and you can have them on your page.

For this demo, we've used Crisp. Log into your Crisp account and add your your Pory.io site URL under "Website Settings". Click on the Settings button and copy the Website ID.

Next, return to your job board site, explore the left menu bar and hit Live Chat. Insert the Crisp Website ID you've copied into the box below.

Remember to save you changes before viewing them live! You now have an easy-to-use live chat function on your job board 🥳

Utilising analytics on your site (Pro feature)

Why are analytics important for your site? Popular web analytics tools like Google Analytics provide insightful reports on your site visitors. You can learn about how users behave on your site, which is the most popular page on your site, who they are by age, location and so on. This useful information can then be used to continually improve your job board as you go along and collect more data.

Here's how you can use Google Analytics on your Pory.io site:

Log into your Google Analytics account and retrieve the tracking ID for your registered site.

Next, return to your job board site, you know the drill, explore the left menu bar and hit Analytics. Insert the Google Analytics Tracking ID here, you're now able to track your site users and better understand what works for your page!

We know Google Analytics can look a bit intimidating initially, especially to someone with no business or marketing knowledge but here are some useful resources that could help:

Now that we've got the basic job board necessities out of the way, here are some extras you can use to jazz up your platform.

Sharing new jobs on social media

You probably already know this - social media is a vital piece of the modern day marketing strategy. Platforms like Twitter have more than 145 million users daily and we felt this medium would best suit a site like a job board where messages are direct and concise.

With suitable integrations, this strategy could be completely cost free!

Here's how you can integrate Zapier with your Pory.io site to automatically share new jobs on Twitter when a new one is posted:

Name your Zap and connect it to your Airtable account. Retrieve the API through the link Zapier provides, then connect it to the Jobs Template base you've created.

Choose the trigger event for your tweet, in this case, that's a new record in the Site Content table.

That's Part 1 done! Now to set up what we want to happen:

Choose Twitter as the app to be connected to and select Create Tweet as the action event.

The next step allows you to customise the tweet that will be published. This is up to your own discretion but we feel that tweets are best kept short, so this is what we've set up:

You can now test the Zap you've just made, and viola!

For notifications on-the-go

Want to keep a lookout for new jobs coming in but don't want to log in every single time? Here's how to integrate Zapier to your Slack channel for message notifications on-the-go, wherever you are:

Part 1 of this is exactly the same as what we did above, it's what we want to do that's different.

Here's Part 1 again just for some practice 😉

Name your Zap and connect it to your Airtable account. Retrieve the API through the link Zapier provides. If you've already done this, this API bit can be skipped.

Customise the record by connecting it to the Jobs Template base you've created.

Choose the trigger event for your tweet, in this case, that's a new record in the Site Content table.

That's Part 1 done! Now to set up getting that Slack notification:

Choose Slack as your app and you can pick an action event you would like. Here, we've decided to send notifications to a specific Slack channel made.

Similarly, you can customise messages for the notifications you'll receive.

Turn on your Zap and you're good to go!

Hopefully this helped you with building your job board. Reach out to us on our live chat (we use Drift 🤭 ) if you need a little help. Additional information on the job board template can be found here.

Best of luck and happy building!