Job board or applicant tracking system: which do you need?.

This guide is for you if you run a WordPress site, you need to hire, and you went looking for a plugin. Half the results say "job board" and the other half say "applicant tracking system". The names sound alike, but the two do different jobs.

By the end you will know what each one does, which one fits your situation, and when you need neither. We make Vakanssi, an applicant tracking plugin, so we also say plainly where it fits and where it does not.

The short answer

A job board lists jobs. An applicant tracking system (ATS for short) manages the people who apply.

A job board gets the vacancy in front of people. An ATS is about what happens after someone clicks Apply: where their CV goes, who reads it, what stage they are at, and when their data is deleted.

Think of the job board as the shop window and the ATS as the back office.

What a job board does

"Job board" means two different things, which is part of the confusion.

The first is a job site: a big website where many employers post openings and job seekers search them. You post there to borrow its audience.

The second is a job board plugin, an add-on that turns your WordPress site into a list of jobs. Some are built for running a job site of your own, where other employers sign up and post their openings, sometimes for a fee.

Either way, a job board's main work is the listing: search, filters and categories. What happens to an application after it is sent varies a lot. In some setups it arrives as an email, and the rest is up to you.

What an applicant tracking system does

An applicant tracking system is software for the hiring itself. When someone applies, the ATS keeps their application and CV in one place, and your team works through them there.

In practice that means:

• every application in one list, instead of scattered across inboxes
• stages, the steps of your hiring such as New, Interview and Offer, often shown as a board where you drag a candidate from one column to the next
• emails to candidates, such as "we got your application" or "we have decided not to move forward"
• notes and interviews kept with the candidate, so a colleague can pick up where you left off
• rules for who on your team can see CVs, and for deleting old applications

Many ATS products are online services you pay for every month. Some, like Vakanssi, run inside your own WordPress site instead.

Which one do you need?

Three questions sort out most cases.

Whose jobs are you listing? If other companies will post jobs on your site, you are running a job site, and you need a job board plugin. If every job is for your own organisation, you need a careers page and a way to handle applications.

How many people apply, and how many of you read them? If you hire once a year, five people apply and one person decides, a shared inbox can be enough. An ATS earns its place when you have several roles open at once, dozens of applicants, or more than one person reviewing.

Where would the CVs end up? CVs are personal data. In an email inbox they can get forwarded, downloaded and forgotten, with no date when they are deleted. If that worries you, you probably want an ATS even at low volume. The privacy guide in our docs shows what Vakanssi does about it.

What a small team actually needs

A small team hiring for itself usually needs these six things, not a job site:

1. 1.A careers page on their own site that lists open jobs and updates itself.
2. 2.An application form on each job that collects a CV and asks for consent.
3. 3.One place where every application arrives, with a stage for each candidate.
4. 4.Ready-made emails, so nobody waits weeks to hear back.
5. 5.A way to let a colleague review candidates without giving them the keys to the whole website.
6. 6.Old applications cleaned up on a schedule, not "when someone remembers".

You can usually skip employer accounts, paid listing packages and a CV database that employers search. Those are job site features, built for a problem you do not have.

Where Vakanssi fits

Vakanssi is an applicant tracking system with a careers page built in. Our WordPress.org FAQ calls it "a job board for your own organisation: your openings on a careers page on your own site, with the applications that come in managed in the same place."

It is not a multi-employer board where other companies sign up and post their own jobs.

The free plugin covers the list above: a careers page and application form, a pipeline board with stages, email templates, interview scheduling with calendar invites, and notes.

It also adds three hiring roles: Recruiter, Hiring Manager, and HR / Compliance. People with these roles can work with candidates but cannot edit your pages or plugins. Old applications are anonymised (the CV and personal details are wiped) automatically after a period you choose under Hiring, then Settings, then General.

It is the wrong tool for running a job site for other employers or charging for listings. A job board plugin is built for that.

The comparison on our home page shows the same split: plugins that only list jobs, and a full hiring system on your own site.

Do you still need outside job sites?

Often, yes. An ATS does not bring in applicants by itself, and big job sites have an audience your website lacks.

Your own job pages can also be shown in Google's job search, with no third-party board in between. Our guide to getting WordPress jobs into Google for Jobs explains how, and why being eligible is not a promise of being listed.

Summary

• Listing other employers' jobs on your site: you need a job board plugin.
• Hiring for your own organisation: you need a careers page and an applicant tracking system.
• One role a year, a handful of applicants, one decision-maker: an inbox can do, as long as you delete CVs when you are done.
• Several roles, several reviewers, or CVs you want out of email: use an ATS.

Your next step: follow How to add a careers page to WordPress. It takes about half an hour and ends with a test application waiting in your applications list.

Frequently asked questions

Can an applicant tracking system show my jobs on my website?

Many can, and Vakanssi does. It adds a careers page that lists your open jobs, with a job page and application form for each one. It uses your theme, so it looks like the rest of your site.

Will other companies be able to post jobs on my site with Vakanssi?

No. Jobs are added in wp-admin (your site's dashboard) by your own signed-in team, and every job is listed under your organisation's name. If you need employer sign-ups, look at a job board plugin instead.

I already use a job board plugin. Can I switch?

Usually. Vakanssi's free Import tool, under Hiring, then Tools, then Import, copies jobs from three common job and recruitment plugins, and applications too from two of them. It never changes or deletes the originals. See Import for which plugins and what comes across.