Creating application forms on your WordPress site is simple with tools like Gravity Forms. In this article, we’ll walk you through creating a  job application form. Soon, you’ll be able to collect applications of all types and include things like resume uploads, signatures and video submissions to make your form stand out from the rest.

Gathering Details

Before you begin, you’ll want to plan out what information you need from a potential applicant. You don’t want to have to follow up asking further questions from your applicant, but you also don’t want to ask for so much information that they give up on the submission. Having a proper balance of information will help you obtain applications for high-quality applicants without scaring off the perfect employee.

Every scenario is different, but here’s an overview of the information you’ll want to gather:

• Name
• Email
• Address
• Phone Number
• Introduction
• Resume/CV Upload
• Experience
• Education
• References
• Questionnaire

Most of the mentioned items are obvious, but 2 in particular, the introduction and questionnaire, are a bit more uncommon.

Applicant Introduction

One way to quickly filter out applicants is to get a general understanding of their communication skills. By requiring the prospective employee to include a bit of information about themselves, any lack of communication skills will typically become immediately apparent.

In a world of online resume writing services, it can be hard to get a good idea of someone’s communication skills based on their resume alone. By requiring unique content that the applicant may not be prepared for ahead of time, you’ll be able to see the applicant’s natural communication skills before speaking with them directly.

Applicant Questionaire

Sometimes finding the right fit requires more than information that can fit on a resume. Similar to the introduction, a questionnaire will allow you to catch the applicant off guard with a few different job-specific questions that they may not already have answers prepared for.

When creating a questionnaire, it’s important to ask questions that directly apply to the position and avoid excessive questioning as it can impact your form’s conversion rates. Save any extra questions for your phone screening.

Building the Application Form

Once you have a rough outline of the fields you need for your application form, you’ll need to get started with building it. In this example, we’ll be using Gravity Forms to create a form in WordPress, but the physical building of your application form can be done in any other form plugin that offers the necessary features.

We also assume that you understand the basics of creating a form in WordPress. If not, you may want to familiarize yourself with the process of creating forms and adding fields first.

We’ve made an example form template available to modify and use. Just download the export file and import the form into Gravity Forms to get started.

Based on the previously mentioned information that you’ll want to gather, here are the fields you’ll be using to create your new application form:

• Name
• Email
• Address
• Phone
• Paragraph Text
• File Upload
• List
• Quiz (available via the Quiz add-on)
• Page Break
• Section Break

Some of these fields are used more than once, such as the Quiz, Page Break, Section Break, Paragraph Text, and List fields. See the provided template for which exact fields are used for different application items.

Field Configuration

Depending on your particular form needs and application requirements, your exact configuration may vary. With that said, we’ll provide a bit more information on some of the settings used in the example form.

Paging

In extensive forms like this, paging is essential. Breaking your application form into multiple pages will help chop the content up into easily managed doses, instead of a single barrage of fields.

When adding your first Page element to the form, configuration related to pages will become available as the first element in the form editor. Opening these settings will allow you to customize things such as the page header and progress bar.

Paragraph Text Fields

Sometimes, content can get a bit long and needs some additional formatting to look nice. Inside each Paragraph Text field, you have the option to enable the Rich Text Editor field option. By doing so, applicants will be able to use familiar controls to format text instead of a boring text-only HTML field using the same controls available within the WordPress post editor.

Use of proper formatting such as headers will also help you pick out the applicants that truly put time and effort into their submissions. Typically, an applicant that takes the time to format their text is one that is willing to work harder to get the job and thus will work harder after they get the job.

Sometimes, the smallest changes like text formatting make the most significant impact.

Sections

Inside the Experience page of your application form you’ll notice multiple sections have been used to break up groups of fields. By correctly utilizing section breaks within your form, your items will flow better and provide a more luxurious user experience.

Not only do the sections allow for better recognition of field groups, but they also allow you to utilize conditional logic to selectively show or hide entire sections of the form.

In the application form template, you’ll notice that the first two Work Experience sections include Radio Button fields to ask if the user has any additional experience to list. By utilizing conditional logic on each page break, entire sections can be set only to show if the applicant has selected a particular option.

Lists

Whenever you need to allow a user to enter multiple sets of data, a List field is usually the best option. Within the form, you’ll notice that both the References and Education pages use List fields to allow the dynamic addition of multiple rows.

In the example, we’re selecting the Enable Multiple Columns option on the List field so that applicants have several columns for each item, such as Name, Relationship, and Phone Number for each reference.

Quiz Fields

Using the Quiz add-on, Quiz fields can are added to score each applicant based on their answers. By enabling weighted scores, you can quickly sort candidates based on the responses they provided in the application form.

For example, if you’re primarily looking for a full-time employee but are open to part-time and contract-based applicants, you can place different scores on each of the answers, then sort by the score. This works in combination with any other Quiz fields, so someone may gain points for looking for full-time employment but lose points for being fired at their last job.

Use Your New Knowledge

If you’ve gotten this far, you probably have an immediate need for an application form on your WordPress site. If you’re already a Gravity Forms user, you can easily import the application form template we’ve provided for this article. After that, just modify it as you need to.

If you’re not a Gravity Forms customer, don’t worry. Our demo includes a full WordPress installation that includes Gravity Forms, all of the add-ons, and the example form used in this article. Just create a new Gravity Forms personalized demo and click on Forms at the left side of the WordPress admin.

The Sky’s The Limit!

Now that you know how to create a smooth and efficient application form, you can expand upon what you learned here by exploring other fields and add-ons. By utilizing add-ons, you can use forms to collect signatures, accept recorded video submissions, or even save form uploads to Dropbox!