Skip to content
Docs

AI Features

WP Career Board Pro 1.4.3 ships a full set of AI-powered hiring tools. They are optional - the plugin works completely without them - but once you add a provider key they light up across both the candidate and employer sides:

  • Job embeddings + AI Chat Search - semantic, natural-language job search.
  • AI candidate matching - “Recommended for you” jobs for each candidate.
  • AI applicant ranking - 0-100 fit score and a one-line reason per applicant.
  • Applicant TL;DR summaries - a one or two sentence summary of each candidate.
  • AI cover-letter writer - candidates generate a tailored cover letter in the apply panel.
  • AI Description Writer - drafts a job description on the post-a-job form.

The hands-on AI documentation lives in the Free plugin’s docs section. That section covers Free’s hook surface and Pro’s feature set in one place so customers see the upgrade path right where they browse. This page is the Pro-side index - for setup, usage, blocks, hooks, and troubleshooting, follow the links below.

The full AI guide

Section titled “The full AI guide”
Topic Where to read
What AI does + the shipping list docs/ai-features/overview
Picking a provider + setup walkthrough docs/ai-features/setup-and-providers
Candidate-side: AI Chat Search, matches, cover letters docs/ai-features/for-candidates
Employer-side: Description Writer + ranking + TL;DR docs/ai-features/for-employers
Block + REST + filters for add-on authors docs/ai-features/blocks-and-developers
Troubleshooting docs/ai-features/troubleshooting

At a glance

Section titled “At a glance”
Feature Surface
Job embeddings on publish Auto - hooks wcb_job_created (needs an embedding provider)
AI Chat Search Block wcb/ai-chat-search, shortcode [wcbp_ai_chat_search], POST /wcb/v1/ai/match
Candidate “Recommended for you” matches POST /wcb/v1/ai/match (current user) and GET /wcb/v1/candidates/{id}/matches
AI applicant ranking One-click on the Employer Dashboard + GET /wcb/v1/ai/ranked-applications/{job_id}
Applicant TL;DR summary Shown in the Employer Dashboard list and detail (returned alongside the fit score)
AI cover-letter writer “Generate” in the candidate apply panel + POST /wcb/v1/jobs/{job_id}/ai-cover-letter
AI Description Writer “Generate with AI” on the post-a-job form + POST /wcb/v1/jobs/ai-description
Auto-score on submit Optional toggle (Settings > AI Settings) - scores each new application in the background
Index existing jobs “Index existing jobs” button (Settings > AI Settings) backfills embeddings

Providers are chosen per task

Section titled “Providers are chosen per task”

Since 1.4.0, the analysis provider and the embedding (matching) provider are configured independently, each with its own API key and model. This lets you, for example, run Claude for analysis copy while using OpenAI for embeddings.

Task Allowed providers Why
Analysis & ranking (ranking, TL;DR, cover letters, descriptions, chat) Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Ollama Completion models. Claude runs on Sonnet by default.
Matching (embeddings) OpenAI, Ollama Embedding models. Claude has no embeddings API, so it is not listed here.

Each provider also exposes a model selector so you can trade quality for cost: Claude (Haiku / Sonnet / Opus), OpenAI (GPT-4o mini / GPT-4o plus the embedding model), and Ollama (model names as installed on your server).

Provider When to pick it
OpenAI Fastest setup. One key covers both analysis and matching.
Anthropic Claude Strong analysis copy. Needs OpenAI or Ollama alongside for embeddings.
Ollama Self-hosted, no key, free. No data leaves your server. Requires server CPU / GPU.

Configure under WP Admin > Career Board > Settings > AI Settings. The fastest path is a single OpenAI key set as both the Analysis and the Matching provider.

Caching and cost control

Section titled “Caching and cost control”

AI fit scores, reasons, and summaries are cached per application in post meta (_wcbp_ai_fit_score, _wcbp_ai_fit_reason, _wcbp_ai_summary, _wcbp_ai_scored_at). Re-opening the Employer Dashboard never re-bills the model - ranking computes only the applications that are missing a score. There is also a per-user rate limit of 30 AI requests per hour on the AI REST endpoints.

What does NOT ship

Section titled “What does NOT ship”

Listed honestly so expectations are calibrated:

  • No resume parser - the filter wcbp_candidate_resume_data resolves a candidate’s resume into text for matching, ranking, and cover letters, but Pro core does not parse uploaded resume files.
  • No “Test connection” button - validate a provider by running a real generation (for example, generate a description on the post-a-job form).
  • No WP-CLI wp wcb ai * commands.

If any blocks your use case, file on the support board.

Why the docs live in Free

Section titled “Why the docs live in Free”

Most WP Career Board users start on Free and decide whether to upgrade after seeing what Pro adds. Documenting Pro AI features inside Free’s docs means the upgrade story is visible right where users browse - no second site to discover, no separate index to maintain. This is deliberate, not a doc-organisation accident.

For all hands-on detail (setup, flows, hooks, troubleshooting), open the Free links above.

Section titled “Related Pro developer docs”