Auto-post jobs from WordPress to LinkedIn
Hi there! 👋
You’re seeing this page because you showed some interest in a solution to auto-post jobs from WordPress to LinkedIn.
This page outlines our current ideas for this solution. We’re still at a scoping phase and your feedback will help us shape the product to fit your needs.
Why do this at all?
Let’s briefly outline the advantages of a solution like this:
Save time
Creating custom text and images for each job is time consuming and doesn’t scale well. There are more important things for you/your team to be doing.
But aren’t there already ways to do this? For example, Broadbean can post jobs to LinkedIn too.
Yes, but there’s a difference. This solution will allow you to…
Get candidates to your website
This is the big one.
Many current solutions send candidates either to the job on LinkedIn or to a job posting on the posting service.
For example, Broadbean will send you to a page like this.
This isn’t a great candidate experience and a lost opportunity for you to connect with candidates and grow your brand.
OK, now that we know this is a good idea, let’s get into the details.
What we’re aiming for
I think it’s worth looking at where we’re trying to get to first, and show you what we think is the desirable end result.
The screenshot above shows a post from a recruitment agency about one of their recent job openings.
This can be split neatly into two parts:
- The text
- The image/link
☝️ It’s important to note that this is not a LinkedIn ‘job’, but a regular post.
The text for this post was manually written and, when the link to the job page was added, this was automatically converted to an image due to the presence of an “OG image” tag.
What’s an OG image tag?
An OG (OpenGraph) image tag is data that is added to a web page that tells social media networks what image to use when this web page is shared. OpenGraph was invented by Facebook and is now used by all social media networks.
Therefore, if we want to auto-post to LinkedIn, we need to do the following:
- Create the text, with a link to the job post
- Create the image and add it to the job page og:image meta data
- Send the text to LinkedIn
Creating the text
This is where the first big decision comes in. Do you want the text to be created automatically, or do you need to manually create this?
Automatic text creation
The idea here is that we create a text template like so:
New role! We’re hiring for a [job_title] in [job_location]. This is a [job_arrangement] role with a salary of [job_salary]. Click the image below to find out more and apply.
[job_url]
The text in the square brackets would be dynamically replaced with the relevant job data to create the following:
New role! We’re hiring for a Marketing Manager in London. This is a Remote role with a salary of £53,000 per year. Click the image below to find out more and apply.
https://youragency.com/jobs/5389
The advantage to this approach is that you don’t need to create the text for every job and the job can be posted on LinkedIn automatically as soon as it is published.
The disadvantage to this is that all ofy our job posts on LinkedIn will look very similar.
Manual text creation
The other way to approach this is that there is a text field in WordPress, on the job edit screen, where you add the text before it is sent to LinkedIn
The advantage to this approach is that you can create more compelling and unique posts.
The disadvantage is that this is a more manual process and cannot happen completely automatically?
Which method do you prefer?
Creating the image
This is something that we actually already do. We have a JobRelay add-on that can generate OG images for you and save them as the OG image for that job page.
This is based on a template system that can be customised per-client to match your branding.
A good example of this is the following from Kemp Recruitment:
This example shows a template that uses a:
- Background image
- Logo
- Job title
- Job location
- Job Salary
The background image can be any of the following:
- A single image used across all jobs
- A collection of images to be randomly used across all jobs
- Separate images for each job category
- A collection of images to be randomly used for each job category
Our intention is that use this system in our LinkedIn product.
Sending the post to LinkedIn
This is the trickiest bit as it involves authentication with LinkedIn and using their API.
We think there will be two ways in which we need to do this:
- Authenticate with and post to the recruitment agency feed
- Authenticate with and post to the consultants feeds
At this point we are thinking of giving the two options above, plus the option to do both.
The other question is, do you need to control which jobs get automatically posted? And if so, how will this be controlled?
We have a few ideas here:
- Auto post all jobs. This is the easiest!
- Don’t auto post any jobs. Leave it as a manual process.
- Create a special taxonomy or field in your job posting service that we use to determine if a job should be posted or not
- Only auto-post jobs from certain categories/sectors
- Only auto-post jobs from certain consultants
Which of these options would you prefer?
Price
We’re intending to price this around £200 – £300 / year.
What is your gut reaction to that? Is it something that you would buy at that price?
Summary
We’re looking to start developing this solution in Q2-3 of 2024.
If you have any further feedback on this idea please get in touch with us. Your input will help to make this a better product.
You can email me directly at keith @ highrise dot digital.
Keith