RecruitPress Review (Plus Installation Guide)

December 14, 2007

Earlier this week, a job board solution called RecruitPress caught my attention on one or two of the blogs I read.

RecruitPress is a freely available, open source solution, based upon the popular WordPress blogging software. To see just what the product offers I thought I’d take it for a spin.

Installation & Configuration

Installing RecruitPress is a relatively straightforward process for the IT literate. For enterprise users, the installation shouldn’t prove much of a challenge for most IT departments. For individuals and small business, if you’ve installed WordPress or a web server based application you should have all of the skills you’ll need.

In either case, an unfamiliarity with WordPress and how it is structured may slow the installation process. The somewhat limited installation documentation does provide instructions on the process, but these may confuse the complete novice as the actual directory structures do not exactly match those outlined.

The configuration of the product is likely to consume more time than the actual installation. Again, some RecruitPress specific documentation would have been helpful, but as the product is based upon WordPress/plug-ins a wealth of information is available on the net.

Out Of The Box Functionality

Job board functionality obviously varies from one board to another, but there are some basic functionalities that users expect to find in any recruitment site. The following table shows how RecruitPress meets these requirements:

Functionality	RecruitPress
Job Search
Advanced Job Search
Jobs By Email
RSS Updates
Job Basket
Candidate Registration
Job Posting
Online Application

RecruitPress provides what I would call ’skeleton functionality’ - the absolute minimum features that an operational job board can have. This doesn’t mean it’s not a useful product, simply that it will be better suited to environments where users will not be looking for the full feature set. I’d be surprised to see RecruitPress considered for a dedicated commercial board, but it provides enough functionality to work as a ‘recruiting bolt on’ to an existing website.

The limited capabilities also mean the product is best suited to recruitment portals with a low job advert inventory. The lack of an advanced search would make searching difficult on high volume sites.

Summary

Reading back over my review, it would be easy to get the idea I was unimpressed with RecruitPress, which couldn’t be further from the truth. As a WordPress enthusiast, everything about RecruitPress makes sense to me and being a WordPress-based product means RecruitPress can be configured and modified to meet specific needs.

Sure, out of the box it’s not going to give you the job board you always wanted. However, with some additional effort and IT skill you can quickly put together a fairly impressive looking recruitment portal. This is the real strength of the product, it’s a structure or framework for a job board, which brings together the majority of the components you need to get started.

Does it need better documentation? Yes.

Do job posts need more than just a body and location field? Yes.

Are the open source community likely to addresses these issues if RecruitPress becomes popular? Yes again.

Despite its ‘out of the box’ shortcomings, I’m rooting for RecruitPress. I’m off to do my bit and write a RecruitPress Installation Guide…(now available)

RecruitPress
Installation
Guide

1 Comment »

1. That’s a useful tool.
   Thanks

   Comment by Job Search Engines — May 12, 2008 @ 1:29 pm

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