What makes a recruitment site hard
The ATS is the source of truth, so the sync has to be honest
Almost every agency already runs an ATS or recruitment CRM such as Bullhorn, Greenhouse or Workable. The website should display what is there, not keep its own copy that drifts. We import jobs through the vendor API or an XML feed on a short schedule, store the ATS job ID on each listing, and treat a job missing from the feed as closed. Applications travel the other way with the job ID, the candidate's consent record and the traffic source attached. When the ATS is down or rejects a record, the application is queued and retried, and an alert is raised. A candidate should never lose an application because two systems disagreed.
Job markup is a specification with consequences
Google reads the JobPosting structured data on each vacancy to show it in job search results. It expects a title, description, posting date, hiring organization and location, and it wants an expiry date and prompt removal when a role is filled. Agencies have an extra wrinkle: confidential clients, where the hiring organization cannot be named. We generate the markup from listing fields, validate it in bulk, return the right status for expired jobs and keep salary and remote-work fields accurate, because misleading markup can cost a site its place in those results.
Search is the product
Candidates judge a job site by its first search. Database LIKE queries are fine for fifty vacancies and poor for five thousand. Past a certain size we index jobs in a search engine such as Elasticsearch or Meilisearch, which gives typo tolerance, synonyms ("developer" and "engineer"), distance sorting and instant filter counts. Locations are geocoded once when the job is saved, not on every search.
Candidate data carries obligations
A resume database is a store of personal data: work history, contact details, sometimes identity documents. Privacy laws such as GDPR expect a lawful basis, a retention period and a way for candidates to see or delete what you hold. We build consent capture at registration, automatic expiry of inactive profiles with a reminder first, private file storage so a resume is never reachable by a guessable URL, and an export and erase tool for your data officer. Tell us which regulations and client contracts apply and we build and test to those terms.
Where WordPress stops and custom starts
A single agency site with a few hundred live roles sits comfortably on WordPress. A board with paid employer accounts, heavy search and custom matching often belongs in Laravel. Our job board and recruitment portal page explains where the line falls.