Job Engine Review – WordPress Job Board Theme

It's always great to see new developments within the WordPress theme and plugin industry, and Engine Themes are one such newcomer to the market. Engine Themes is a new WordPress theme company and their first product is the Job Engine theme. Read on to see what we think of it...

This article was written by our experts using our in-depth analysis methodology.

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It’s always great to see new developments within the WordPress theme and plugin industry, and Engine Themes are one such newcomer to the market.

Engine Themes is a new WordPress theme company and their first product is the Job Engine theme.

Job Engine is one of those themes that might be referred to as an app-theme. This means that by installing this theme you are essentially changing the whole scope of WordPress to focus on one particular use: that of being a full-featured Job Board.

JobEngine latest jobs

I am a big fan of such themes, as they are not just an aesthetic variation but bring extended functionality to WordPress, a cross between themes and plugins if you will.

So let’s take a closer look at the Job Engine theme. Job Boards have been covered by other theme companies before, so I’m interested in how the new Engine Themes product compares.

Usage

The interface is deliciously slick and user friendly, with a clever usage of Ajax throughout the front end and back end.

For example, in the front end, users can revise the job search criteria without having to reload the page, the changing results are handled via Ajax.

The more I played around with this theme, the more I got the feeling that the developers actually improved the WordPress workflow. It’s not common that I meet a plugin or theme that actually makes things more intuitive than the default WordPress interface.

Within the administration section, Engine Themes are employing their own options panel, something which is normally frowned upon in the WordPress community. There are WordPress UI elements that should usually be used rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Job Engine Administration

However, in this case I am in full agreement with the decision to use a custom administration panel, especially since Job Engine is more than your typical theme, but as we said before, an app-theme, which deserves a specialised options panel. Kudos to the developers for coming up with an administration section that kicks ass and keeps things simple at the same time.

Features

This theme is quite feature-rich, and it shows that the people behind it actually have a deep knowledge about how job sites work.

As a site administrator, you set the pricing options and also what types of jobs people can submit (e.g. part-time and full-time). You can also set the payment gateways to be used. A handy feature is the ability to test the payment gateway, and thus not be charged anything during the testing phase.

Post a Job - JobEngine

As a site user, you’re either there to submit a job or to search for one. In the case of job submissions, you can also choose to be featured (you will get a ribbon next to your listing, making it more attractive). You will also need to choose the contract type and job category. All this is handled by the submission wizard, which makes it easy as pie to submit a new job.

From a job searcher’s perspective, it’s also a joy to use. You can search by job or even by list of companies.

Companies JobEngine

The Job Engine theme includes six pre-installed languages as well as a built-in translator to localize the theme into any other language. That’s great news for those of you who serve multilingual markets.

Don’t take my word about how easy this theme is to use, Engine Themes have provided a handy demo for you to try out before purchasing:

http://demo.enginethemes.com/jobengine/

Another handy feature is the mailing functionality. You have eight in built templates you can use, but you can also create your own or customise the existing ones. You can set it up so that whenever a user applies for a listed job, both the user and the advertiser get an email notifying them of the potential match.

Design

I love this theme’s design, it is very much in line with the latest design trends, keeping things simple and focusing on the usability aspect. This is essential when building a job board website, since you’ll be getting users with all kinds of different computer usage skills, and you must therefore keep things as logical and simple as possible.

The fonts and icons used show a high attention to detail, clearly a lot of thought has been put into the design of this theme, with nothing left to chance.

I can’t forget to mention that the theme is responsive and looks absolutely beautiful on mobile devices. Here’s a photo of it loaded on my Samsung S2, I gave it a spin and it’s really easy to use, this is mobile responsive design at its best.

Job-Engine-mobile

Engine Themes have stated that they design themes with a mobile first approach, and that is probably why Job Engine feels so at home on smartphones and other devices like the iPad.

Documentation & Support

Engine Themes Documentation

The documentation is complete, you can easily follow the articles in the support section for help in settings thing up. The good thing is that you probably won’t even need to refer to the documentation, as the theme is very intuitive to use.

The fact that many of the actions needed to set up the theme are in wizard form, helps immensely, and any error messages are user friendly and indicative of your mistake.

Support is easy to get hold of. If you don’t find an answer to your question from the support documentation, you can just fire an email to the Engine Themes support staff and they’ll get back to you with their help.

Updating

Updates are pushed automatically to your site, so you don’t have to do any manual work yourself. Whenever a new version is released (Engine themes promise to release update every week with further tweaks), you can just hit the update link in your dashboard, and start working with the newest version.

It’s good to see that Engine themes are eager to provide regular updates based on their customers’ feedback, that’s a good way to start gaining customer confidence.

Competitors

Job listing themes are not a new concept, and there have already been a few takes by other WordPress theme companies before. Here are some of the best alternatives:

  • DailyWP’s JobPress Pro ($119)
  • Appthemes’ Job Roller ($99)
  • Job Press (free)

While the above themes have been successful, they haven’t been updated recently, and lack the interface polish that I’ve enjoyed whilst trying out Job Engine.

Pricing

Engine Themes have taken a bold step by pricing their Job Engine theme at $129, which is probably the highest price I’ve seen till now for a WordPress theme. I definitely agree that top quality themes (especially app-themes) are worth this price and even more, but still Engine Themes are differentiating from the rest of the market here.

They are clearly showing a lot of faith in their product, and if the higher price also means better support, it might be a good bet.

Final Verdict

Job Engine is a solid theme that is perfect if you want to start a job listing website. You can easily start earning money from your site with the multiple payment solutions available with this theme, and you can also have multiple languages thanks to the theme’s translator.

This is the first theme from Engine Themes, but don’t let that fact hold you back, the guys who created this theme are no amateurs, and the interface and coding quality are top notch. In fact, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Engine Themes come up with next, as they are sure to carve an important niche within the WordPress theme market.

Download Job Engine

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Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

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19 Responses

  1. I’m aware that this article was written more than a decade ago and I wonder if JobEngine is still leading the race of the job board theme. I have seen and read reviews on so many newer job board themes lately. They have amazing features that hadn’t been there when this article was first written

    1. Hi Ali, thanks for chiming in on this. The review was first written a long time ago, that’s true. What other job board themes and tools are you comparing at the moment? We’ll look into covering them in the future too.

  2. I was trying to reach the support of this theme but they never get back to me with a reply whatsoever now it has been more than two weeks with no reply, I sent my ticket email again to them 5 days ago and still they are not replying, I tried using their website support ticket and also no reply … also they are not using theme forest to sell their themes so this is another disadvantage that you cannot get support from there as well , I highly recommend taking this in consideration when thinking to buy a theme from this company .. and I am totally disappointed with this theme ..

  3. Wonderful review! Thanks a lot, I am surely going to get this for my new project.
    Seems like the theme is build unlikely well, I signed up for their contest to win a copy πŸ™‚
    Compliments to the people at EngineThemes!

  4. Sorry but DailyWP’s JobPress Pro ($119) is from the same as Job Engine theme!!!!!

    Only other domain and any bugs free from JobPress and neu update with payable plugins!!!

    Pls send if i have not right!!!!

    1. Hi Gabor,

      DailyWP has been acquired by us last year. We’ve since then tried to upgrade the products without success due to the difficulties in scaling and code maintenance. We then came to a decision to discontinue the old DailyWP themes. Should you have any questions, please drop us an email at contact@enginethemes.com.

      Thank you for your question.

  5. Hi Nick,

    I’m Anh Chau from the EngineThemes team. Thanks for your interest in JobEngine. Just FYI, a jobseeker module is currently developed for JobEngine at the moment and a beta version may be ready at the end of this May.

    You should subscribe to our blog ) to keep updated with our releases then. πŸ™‚

    Cheers!

    1. Thanks Anh! I look forwards to seeing the beta jobseeker module soon. Best, Nick (PS I’ll follow your blog)

  6. Hi Jessi,

    Does this mean JobEngine is looking to integrate a employee resume upload / employer resume search function soon? I’m very interested in the theme and it’s the only weakness compared to others on the market. It’s an important feature for producing revenue from a job board website.

    Thanks, Nick

  7. Hi Mohsin,
    Thank for giving opinion about our theme.
    Currently, JobEngine hasn’t supported job seekers feature yet. However, resume database is saved in JobEngine with application post type. You may get new updates with job seekers features in May.

    Hope you will keep updating our weekly update.

    Jessi Linh

  8. Beautiful theme, the only thing lacking in this theme, but is a part of AppThemes’ JobRoller is a resume database, to which employers can pay a fee and subscribe.

  9. Hi Jean,
    Thank for writing a good review.
    After reading your post, I bought this theme and am using it now.
    I feel really satisfied with its result. The jobboard theme is designed beautifully. I love it.

    If someone is looking for some kind of theme like this. Try this theme.

  10. Hi Jean,
    I am having trouble accessing the promo code. I shared on both facebook and Google+ yet I didn’t see any code appear.
    I would very much like to make a dent in the $129 price tag.
    Please let me know how I can go about remedying the situation
    Cheers

  11. I saw you have a job board here: . Why don’t you get a JobEngine for WPMayor? Haha

    By the way, we are developing a extension for JobEngine, so with it, you can import the jobs from any RSS!

    1. Not a bad idea, especially when it can import from RSS. I’ll keep it in mind, first I need to complete a long due overhaul of the site’s theme.

  12. We are currently starting starting two Jobboards in the Germany using AppThemes’ WordPress Jobboard solution.

    Thank you very much for the very interesting revew of JobEngine’s theme, Jean. We tested the system via the demo on the website. They seem to solve some of the issues we identified when we started with AppThemes’ solution. (e.g. the mobile support, native support of more than one payment system etc.).

    We have sent an eMail to Enginethemes and are looking foreward to trying out the theme, using the discount!

  13. Nice review, Jean!!
    I find out the perfect niche and stand out from the other job board themes.

    Keep up the good work.

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