One of the most common (and powerful) uses of Gravity Forms and GravityView is as a job applicant management system.
With Gravity Forms, you can easily create a system that allows job seekers to submit an application for the job. Then, with GravityView, you can let decision-makers review, reject, and comment on these applications directly on a (private) web page, without having to log into the back end of your WordPress website.
In this guide, we’ll walk through creating a complete job application management system. Here’s what we’ll create:
- A page that allows job applicants to fill out a form and apply for a job
- A front end page (View) that lets the employer view the submitted job applications, approve/deny them, and leave comments
💡 Check out a live demo of the finished job application management system and get your own free trial site preloaded with all GravityKit add-ons!
Here’s what our final product will look like:
To learn more about displaying entries in Gravity Forms, read Displaying Gravity Forms Entries: The Ultimate Guide.
Step 1: Create the Form
In Gravity Forms, create your form and give it a name. Add the fields relevant to your job position. Usually, this includes the following Advanced fields:
- Name
- Phone
- Website
We’ll also need to customize a few fields:
- File Upload (for resumes, CVs, or other files)
- Cover letter (paragraph text)
Tip: you can customize the File Upload field. We recommend renaming it “Resume”, limiting the file size to less than 15 MB, and limiting file extensions to PDF or Txt.
You may also want to create fields for social media accounts:
- Github
You can also add fields for other questions, such as…
- What countries are you authorized to work in?
- What time zone are you located in?
- How soon can you start?
- Have you worked remotely before?
- …and so on…
Finally, we want to add a special GravityView field: Approve/Reject. This will add a field to the entry that allows the employer to approve or reject submitted entries. This is useful if you receive a large number of applications that are incomplete, didn’t follow the directions, or are otherwise invalid.
Tip: Add a “reading test” field to make sure that applicants follow instructions and read your entire job ad. This is a common practice among employers. Simply add a note in your job ad saying “The code word is ‘spaceship’ and then add field that asks “What’s the code word?” to your form. If the applicant didn’t write the correct answer, you can be sure they didn’t read your ad!
Once your form is finished, create a new WordPress page and add your form. Preview it to make sure everything looks good! If it does, we can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Create Your View
Now that we’ve got a form, it’s time to create a View. A View will allow you to view all of the submitted entries on the front end of your website. This is useful in a lot of ways! To create a View, go to Views > New View on your WordPress Sidebar. Give your View a name – let’s call it “Submitted Job Applications.” We’ll want to select the form we created in Step 1. Then, we need to pick a View type. For our purposes, the Table View makes the most sense. Now we’re on the View Configuration page. Let’s customize the Multiple Entries configuration first. This is the “default” page which will display all (or a large number) of the submitted entries at one time. At the top, we’ll add a few useful widgets. To do this, click +Add Widget.
- Show Pagination Info (to show how many entries are currently displayed)
- Page Links, to allow us to navigate to other pages (in case we have a lot of applicants)
- Search Bar, to allow us to search through the submitted applications
Then, under Entries Fields, we’ll start by adding the Name field. Click on the field settings icon (the gear icon next to the field) and enable Link to single entry. This will link the applicant’s name field on the Multiple Entries context to their specific application page (the Single Entry context). We can add many other fields to the Multiple Entries page, depending on what we want to build. We’ll save most of the applicant’s detailed fields for the Single Entry page. The goal of the Multiple Entries page is an important part of our job application management system as it provides a high-level overview of all the applicants.
Let’s add the Entry Date field. This way, we can view when the application was submitted (and filter/sort the entries by date.) Next, let’s add the Approval Status of the entry. This will display whether the entry has been approved or not. We’ll add a way to approve/reject an entry on its Single Entry page.
Finally, let’s add a Votes Rating field. This will display an aggregate up/down the rating of the applicant. This functionality is useful if you want your decision-makers to upvote or downvote candidates.
Let’s scroll down to the bottom of the page and customize some settings. Under View Settings, we can enable Move Featured Entries to Top, which will move “starred” entries to the top. You can “star” an entry from the WordPress backend GravityView page. Read more about Featured Entries here. Under Filter and Sort, we can filter our submitted entries by Date Created (or another field.) Finally, under Ratings and Reviews, we want to check Enable entry review. We can choose between a 5-Star rating or an up/down rating. For our example, we’ll use the up/down option.
The Single Entry Page
Now, let’s customize the Single Entry page by clicking on the tab. This is the “details” page, where we’ll include all of the submitted application details. Click “Add Field” and add the fields from our form.
- Name
- Phone
- Website
- Resume/CV file upload
- Cover letter
- Github
- What countries are you authorized to work in?
- Have you worked remotely before?
- What is the code word?
We can also add the Entry Date field to display when the application was submitted. Now, let’s add some special fields.
Job Application Management System: Approving Entries
These two fields will allow you to approve or reject an entry directly from the View. This is useful for discarding incomplete, empty, or spam submissions. Or, if the applicant didn’t answer the “did you read this?” question correctly. ;)
Entry Notes
This field will allow you to leave comments and notes on the entry. You can easily note important information about the applicant.
Edit Entry
Finally, this field will link to the Edit Entry page, which lets you modify the submitted data. This probably isn’t extremely useful for a job management system, but you might need it!
Votes Rating
Finally, let’s add the Votes Rating widget. This will display the total ratings + reviews on the entry. Here are the fields our Single Entry View contains:
Our job application management system is coming together! We’ve just got a few more important things to do.
Step 3: Add Your Form and View to (Separate) Pages
Now that we have created a form and View, we’ll want to add them to (separate) pages. To do this, create a WordPress page and then press the Add Form or Add View button, which is just below the Page title. You can then customize the options for your embedded Form/View. We’ll want to create and publish two separate pages:
- One public-facing page for the form, which will allow individuals to submit their application
- One private page for the View, which will allow decision-makers in the company to review and comment on the submitted applications
Step 4: Test Out Your New job Application Management System!
Now that everything is up and running, let’s take it for a spin! Let’s submit a mock applicant and see how it looks. Go to your page with the embedded form and fill it out with sample data. Then, after you press submit, go to the page with the embedded View. You should see your submitted applicant: As you can see, we have the applicant’s name, the date the entry was submitted, their approval status, and a votes rating counter. Click on the name (the underlined link) to navigate to the Single Entry page for the applicant. We’ll now see the rest of the submitted data: If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see the special fields that we specifically added:
- We can approve or deny the entry (read more about this functionality here)
- We can add a note to the job application (and even email it directly to the applicant)
- And we can rate the applicant up or down by filling out a review.
That about covers the process of setting up a basic job application management system! With GravityView, the possibilities are nearly endless – no matter what functionality you need to have, we’ve got you covered. So what are you waiting for? Get GravityView today!